The Abrupt Hokage
by Akirameru
Summary: The best-kept secret is the one so consistently revealed and unbelievable that it's treated more like a joke than as a fact. Naruto, apprenticed to the hokage and having undergone seal alteration since childhood, was nominated and ready for training. Cruelly, an untimely death shoves Naruto into his role years sooner than he or anyone had anticipated. Young Hokage. ABANDONED.
1. Prologue: Invasion

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, nor the characters associated. I do not benefit from any source of revenue due to the writing of this story.

 **Note:** The story used to be labelled humor, but situations that couldn't be brought to a humorous light curtailed the opportunity to present it, and the story devolved into a mess of serious and untimely humor. If you can see this note, every chapter has hence been revised and most of the content rewritten. A very silly scene with Naruto vs Shukaku in the prologue will remain, as an example to what the story was like.

 **April 2019** : I notice this story is getting a lot of clicks because of my other story, _Ascendance_ , but it's a bit embarrassing. Here's your warning: this isn't written to the same level.

 **Prologue**

The best kept secret is the one consistently  
revealed and never believed.

* * *

"Told you I'd beat Neji," Naruto said, leaning against the railing of the chunin exam arena. Thousands of spectators from around the globe watched with bated breath as the Uchiha survivor and the Kazekage's son duked it out on the grounds below, cheers erupting every-so-often whenever a particularly nasty hit was struck - though the two were more blocking and dodging than anything else at the moment.

His teammate, Sakura, shook her head with a sigh. "I know."

"I mean, I _really_ beat him good, huh?"

"Yes."

Naruto grumbled. "I'm going to be Hokage, you know." Besides Sakura, Ino laughed quietly.

"Sure," Sakura rolled her eyes, trying to ignore him. If she didn't feed him, he'd shut up eventually. Naruto was just wandering around after his fight and seemed intent to bother her a little bit more insistently than usual.

The crowd began muttering incessantly as things ramped up below, in the arena. Glancing back down to the fight, Naruto observed Gaara hidden within a ball of sand. "That looks uncomfortable," he muttered. Sasuke had run up the wall opposite them at some point, settled into an awkward semi-crouching stance. "What's he doing?"

"The chidori," Kakashi said, having silently stood by Naruto's backside.

"You taught him the chidori?" Naruto asked, eye cocked. He nodded. "What a waste of time," the blond said.

"Shut up please," Sakura said, arms crossed and tense. It was difficult to focus on the fight when Naruto was so loud, and she was rather interested in this one. "I want to watch Sasuke destroy the sand monster in peace."

Naruto hummed, decided to do as asked and fell silent for the moment.

"You really taught him chidori?" That was Gai, who was even louder. Sakura twitched miserably. Naruto hadn't even noticed him arrive.

"As if you can speak," Kakashi said, and gesturing to the bandaged mini-Gai besides the green-clad man. "Right Lee?"

A murmur of appreciation rippled through the crowd as the Uchiha surged down the wall and towards the ball of sand.

"That's some impressive speed," Naruto said, whistling in appreciation. "I wish I was that fast."

"Of course," Sakura and Ino rebuked, only pausing to glance at the other before placing their eyes back on to the spectacle. Gaara could evidently spy his incoming opponent, for spikes thick, large and made of sand burst from his bubble with high accuracy and velocity. It would only be due to Sasuke's sharingan that he so easily anticipated them, ducked and pushed forward into and through the sand casing.

The world paused as all eyes were set on the arm halfway through the bubble of sand. Some seemed absurdly shocked, while others - such as Kakashi - watched with a fulfilled expectation.

Then, time resumed as Sasuke was pushed back violently by a humongous arm, pulsing with blue veins of chakra and decorated with sharp claws.

"It's the one-tails," Naruto said, leaning back and frowning.

Kakashi placed a hand on Naruto's shoulder and leaned close. "You have permission."

"I know," Naruto said. " _Finally_."

"Hey, wait!" Sakura said. "Where do you think you're go-"

"Try not to die Sakura-chan!" Naruto said. With a grin, he stepped on to the rails around the arena and dived inside.

Sakura blinked dumbly. "What is he doing? They're still fighting!"

Naruto turned to the Hokage's box above the audience as he fell. The room exploded - a dozen ninja fleeing, two in decorative robes, and he observed as an arena made of bright purple barriers sprung up far above the crowd.

He clicked his tongue as he landed in a roll, coming to his feet. If anybody can handle themselves, it's the hokage - best not worry about it. " _Oi, Gaara!_ "

The red-head was invisible, buried within a rapidly shifting, large expanse of sand. He grew, and grew, and grew before the blond's gaze until the behemoth was fully formed. Reaching even larger heights than the tall walls of the arena and casting a shadow that even reached the crowd, the sand tanuki was just about big enough to be _bad_.

"Sooo... how's it going?" Naruto asked, eye cocked. Sasuke gave him a sour look as he backed off to the edge of the arena.

"What's happening?" he asked, observing the sudden influx of fights on the stands around and through the crowd. "Is that the sand? The sound too? _Why are we under attack?!_ "

Naruto shrugged off his glare. "The 'why' doesn't matter. Go help Sakura or something, unless you're scared you can't handle fighting a real ninja, ne Sasuke?"

He clenched his fists. "And leave you to take care of this? Sorry Naruto, but you're not as strong as you think you are."

Naruto opened his mouth ready to retort, but the option was taken away from him by Kakashi calling from the stands. " _Get up here Sasuke!_ " The Uchiha tched and quickly made his way up the wall to his mentor, not sparing the blond a second glance.

"Good luck dobe."

Naruto couldn't prevent the eye twitch. "Dobe this, dobe that... I'll show you, duck-butt. I'm going to be Hokage, you know!"

" **You!** "

The gigantic sand tanuki took a heavy step that sent the surprised blond desperately diving out of the way, tumbling and reeling. "Ow..." he said, rubbing his head. "Don't be such an ass, Gaara!"

" **Ant!** " the raccoon roared, " **bring out the nine-tails before I CRUSH you!"**

"Jeez..." Naruto said, "calm down, dude. Give it a second." He took the moment to run his hands down his jacket, smoothing over the ruffled and stretched sleeves from his bouncing around the floor. The sand biju waited somewhat patiently, surprisingly.

It was then that he noticed the lull in the fighting, and Naruto realized what had happened. The stadium was huge, sure, but the Tanuki was big too - and his voice carried. "There goes that secret," Naruto muttered, clapping his hands together. "Not that it was going to last any longer anyway."

A scrawl of fuinjutsu erupted into visibility all over his skin. Around his hands, his wrists, his neck and face. Everywhere that was exposed. Then, it disappeared, and in its place roared chakra - golden in color, thick and wild, forming a cloak.

The cloak was so wild and so abrupt that even the one-tails - as large and indomitable as it was - took an unconscious step back.

He heard the quick conversations, which at this distance were barely whispers. Most ended with ' _later, this isn't the time_ ' or ' _this was a bad idea._ '

"It's nice to let it out," Naruto said, a wide smile decorating his face. "You have _no_ idea how much practice I've had sitting still while perverts draw kanji on me. Ichibi, meet Kyuubi. Kyuubi shut the fuck up and do what I say." For a moment, the aura exploded outwards, tinged orange, but with a single calm breath, it receded. "Asshole," he muttered.

The Ichibi growled, moved forward and twisted - sending his large, battering-ram tail directly towards the blond. In the tanuki's mind, the blond was screwed if it landed, so he produced a monstrous grin as he passed the point of no return and the blond hadn't budged.

It made it all the more shocking when he caught it and hadn't been moved an inch.

* * *

"You have an interesting genin," Orochimaru said, watching with keen interest as the Ichibi was _thrown_ out of the stadium shrieking, just to land on one of many vacated buildings around the stadium and producing an earth-shattering quake. "If he even is a genin."

"He was participating in the chunin exams," said the Third. Bereft of his ceremonial robes, the old man stood with arms crossed and clad in his battle armor, a remnant of darker times. "He can only be a genin."

"If you say so." Orochimaru promptly ignored it and looked the Hokage up and down with a feral grin. "I notice you expected your death."

The third grunted, and the roof began cracking. The efforts of the two gathering their chakra destroyed the structure beneath them, little by little. Flakes of the tiling gathered around them as they stared, the third stalwart, Orochimaru smirking.

"I am not going to go easy on you just because you're old."

"I was not expecting a handicap," the third said. "I may make you return to the Academy, depending on your performance."

"Please don't disappoint me."

So it commenced, loyal soldiers of both sides watching worried with fists clenched, kept away by the barriers drawn by Orochimaru's underlings. There were only so many ways this could go right for either side and with men and women dying no matter where you looked, it was grim.

Winning the battle wouldn't bring back the casualties, each sliver of advantage paid for in blood was blood irrevocable.

* * *

The street was trashed; most buildings had been toppled and deep layers of sand decorated every other surface.

" **HOW ARE YOU THIS POWERFUL?!** " the Ichibi yelled, sand falling from its body staggeringly quickly as it struggled to keep its form coherent. It had shrunk by such a volume that standing on an apartment building that would have previously been dwarfed by the tanuki's size now gave Naruto, still clad in his golden chakra, a significant height advantage.

The nevertheless-hulking beast roared angrily and in a desperate last-ditch effort began gathering the chakra it still had access to. Orbs of a ghastly blue and black chakra formed outwards of the tanuki, which quickly gathered to a spot above its gaping maw.

"Oh no, you don't!" Naruto recognized it for what it was, and leaped forward to put a stop to it - but too little too late, and his confident smirk was forcibly wiped off his face in an explosion of chakra he had no chance of dodging. Naruto severely underestimated the preparation time, and that _very_ quickly resulted in a turn-around.

The Ichibi panted, chakra spent, and formed a beastly grin upon his sandy maw. " **YOU'RE NOTHING TO ME, KYUUBI! THAT'S WHAT YOU GET FOR BEING SUCH AN ASSHOLE!** " He commenced laughing evilly, ready to turn around and chew on some leaf-nin.

"ow..."

"... _ **no**_."

Naruto burst through the surface of a pile of rubble. "That reaaaally hurt," he said, scratching the back of his head and wincing. The glow of his cloak was still present but highly diminished. "HEY! YOU RUINED MY JACKET!"

" _ **YOU RUINED MY BODY!**_ _"_

 _"MY JACKET MATTERS_ WAY _MORE THAN YOUR STUPID SAND!"_

 _"_ _ **GRRRRRRRRRRR!**_ "

" _GRRRRRRRRRRR_ to you too, you piece of shit!"

" **SERIOUSLY, JUST SHUT UP ALREADY! I'VE HAD ENOUGH!** "

Naruto just shook his head and stood up, sand falling off him and his torn jacket sliding off freely. "That was my favorite jacket, you jackass." He wiped the sand off his now naked arms with a shiver, the sand had a disgustingly unnatural texture. He stretched his arms as he gave the tanuki a look - it had gotten even smaller, and Gaara's mop of red hair was becoming more visible by the minute. "Target acquired."

The severely weakened and chakra-spent Ichibi didn't bother struggling but instead glared at the blond as he leaped up and easily pulled Gaara from the sand's clutches.

" **I'll be back**."

The sand collapsed and Naruto quickly prevented Gaara's stirring by applying a seal from the pouch at his thigh. "'I'll be back' my hairy ass," he muttered. "Someone will find you," he told Gaara, despite the latter's being unconscious.

Beating the Ichibi was only step one, next he should probably help with the giant snakes so clearly demolishing the village's walls.

He was tired, but people are dying. There were no excuses worth making to sit this one out.

* * *

The Leaf had more ninja, they had the stronger ninja, and they had the home field advantage.

As the last snake went out in a puff of smoke, Naruto finally relaxed. The other combatants, a group of chunin and a jounin or two, quickly left to continue the defense elsewhere - but there should only be clean-up left.

He made a clone to keep watch and sat down to catch his breath. Naruto wasn't in the greatest condition, he lost his headband at some point and he had so many scratches and scrapes that in his fatigue his healing factor hadn't yet gotten around to all of them.

But he had helped. The sheer effort of years of altering his seal and training to handle his biju, had finally come to fruition... it was immeasurably satisfying but made him sick. He had to kill people. Sure, he both directly and indirectly _saved_ other lives for every life he took, but...

His previously orange trousers were stained a thick red, and his only saving grace was blood's inability to dye his navy shirt anything but a darker blue. It was still heavy and wet, however, and that made him uncomfortable.

He realized it was a bit childish to be so annoyed by a bit of blood when almost none of it was his. It was evidence of his victories.

"I guess I've finally proved myself, huh?" he grinned. "Gotta look on the bright side. I'm alive, the Leaf's alive, and-"

" _Uzumaki-sama_."

His heart dropped, even as he reflexively stood up and turned around to face the speaker - a nondescript female member of the Anbu black ops. The way she said that... 'I'm a genin,' he assured himself, 'I'm still a genin.' He _knew_ that. Don't panic.

"Y-yes?" There's _no_ way.

"Uzumaki-sama, the-"

" _I'm still a genin!_ " he said, hands clenched and eyes narrowed, a thin frown etched on his face.

"The third-" she sounded exasperated.

" _No._ "

As the woman lowered her head and bowed, his lips became dried and inoperable. "The third was killed in action, _Hokage-sama_."

* * *

 **AN:**

Another fledgling of a plot bunny that keeps rearing its head no matter how many times I forget about it. Whelp! Here it is, enjoy it for me! :D

 **Edited 3/01/2019: Removed warning, deleted commas, replaced some wording**


	2. The Rise of the Fifth

Loving the response so far!

 **Chapter 1**

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want  
to test a man's character, give him power."

* * *

As the woman lowered her head and bowed, his lips became dried and inoperable. "The third was killed in action, _Hokage-sama_."

Flinching like he was struck, Naruto collapsed to his knees, grazing them on the stone rubble beneath without care.

" _No._ He's not dead."

"..."

"He's not. You're _wrong_."

"..."

"It's too soon. I-I'm not _supposed_ to be Hokage yet! Maybe in a few years, when I'm older, then he can-" after anger, came bargaining.

" _Hokage-sama!_ "

Her urgent tone broke Naruto out of his reverie, and the sound of explosive tags going off in the distance returned him to the present. Right, the invasion. He had... he had work to do...

Stop the Ichibi. Check.

Stop the summons. Check.

... _return to the Hokage_ for reassignment.

That was... Naruto shuddered, getting back to his feet and facing the bearer of bad news, locking eyes through their mask. "Let's go."

* * *

It took less than a minute to reach the make-shift arena where the third had fought, but the thoughts provoking the blond made it feel like far longer. He observed from the perch as his shinobi - which he did _not_ feel comfortable labelling as such - completed the final sweeps of the village, sensor ninja in tow.

...he held in his hands the previous hokage's robes. Naruto refused to look at the corpse yet, but found solace in handling this part of him, which the old man had thrown off as the battle was started. He was very tempted to wear the haori and the scarf, actually. The hat was a bit too big right now, but the haori - which hung around the thirds knees - would fit snugly above his ankles.

 _Kami, he was going to miss that man._ Hiruzen Sarutobi was his adoptive grandfather in everything but name.

The third gave him a place to live, he fed him, he trained him, told him stories about his parents... He gripped the clothes tightly.

' _He named me his successor._ '

"Too soon," Naruto whispered. "I'm not ready for this, but for jiji... I guess..."

"Hokage-sama!" the last patrol squad assigned to the outer-rim kneeled in front of him, having appeared without his notice. It was a small group of the surviving chunin alongside a Hyuuga clan member. "No enemy presence detected within the village, sir."

He didn't have time for depression, huh? Straight to acceptance then.

"Good job," he said, after staring at them for a moment. He waved them off and they left to spread the news, leaving him alone with his new - but silent - Anbu security detail. Naruto was going to have to get used to that, the whole 'not ever being alone' thing.

"Hey," he gestured to the only one he spotted, one who didn't bother hiding, "so am I meant to learn hand gestures to order you around or something?"

* * *

He hadn't been interrupted by anything important yet, everyone had their jobs to do and all of his fancier underlings - whom he scarcely knew - organised the searches, threw out immediately necessary field promotions, released the civilians from their hidey-holes and organised temporary housing for those who lost their homes in the invasion... or at least, that's all he'd noticed anyway.

He wasn't much of a hokage, evidently.

This meant he had the time to be terribly focused on trying to figure out the many different ways to click his fingers, and was also why he was so surprised when somebody came to bother him.

"Yo!"

" _Eep!_ " Naruto scrambled to his feet reflexively with a dumb squeal. "Jesus sensei! Give me some warning!"

"Uh.." Kakashi said, "we could try again?"

"No," Naruto said, rolling his eyes. "What do you need? How's Sakura?"

Kakashi chuckled dryly. "Sakura's fine. Your friends did okay, but Sasuke and Ino are the ones in the hospital. A better question is, I think, how are _you_ Hokage-sama?" The man moved to sit besides Naruto, who'd sat back down at some point on the edge of the roof.

Naruto hesitated. "I-I'm okay. I think."

"That's all?" Kakashi cocked his brow.

"I mean... I don't know. I'm angry that we were invaded, and I'm sad that the old man's dead - if that's what you mean. I-I don't really know what being hokage means yet, so I'm a bit confused by that, but I _kinda_ do know, you know what I mean? Ugh, I'm not explaining this properly, I-"

"I get it," Kakashi murmured, impulsively running a hand through the blond's hair. "What's with the get-up?" he asked, referring to the navy shirt and the pair of navy trousers the blond hadn't been wearing the last time he'd seen him.

"Uh, they had me change when I got here," Naruto said. A light blush dusted his cheeks as he rubbed his face awkwardly. "I was too bloody, y'know?"

Kakashi nodded, saying nothing.

" _I'm serious!_ " Naruto said, pouting. "A-anyway. What did Sasuke do?"

"And not Ino?" Kakashi asked, then proceeding to ignore Naruto as he rolled his eyes, "the usual Sasuke stuff. Took a hit for Sakura, he's okay though."

Naruto nodded, easily seeing something like that happening again. The Uchiha had done the same for him, after all.

"Ino lost her arms and l-"

" _WHAT?!_ " he jumped to his feet, "how did-"

"I'm _joking_ ," Kakashi said, "she got poisoned a little bit."

Naruto growled, sitting back down with a plop. "You're just making fun of me."

Kakashi shrugged, staring below at the herds of shinobi and civilians alike as they recovered and rebuilt as much as they immediately could. He shifted his gaze to his new superior. "You have to care for everyone now, Naruto. _This_ ," he waved his arm across the rooftops and the semi-intact village wall over the horizon. "You have to take care of it. Everything you can see from this perch, everything the light touches is your responsibility now, and that which remains dark is even more so. It doesn't matter if it's Sakura, Sasuke, a craftsman or a stray dog; it's your job to nurture and protect them, even if you're a bit younger than anyone in your position has right to be."

"So I _do_ look too young."

"The youngest," Kakashi confirmed, with a shrug. Naruto was quick to bite, but Kakashi knew he was eating the rest up too.

"...The third said something just like that once."

"Oh? I'm not surprised."

"Yeah..." Naruto muttered. "Say, can you help me figure out how this scarf thing works? Do I put it on _before_ , or _after_ the haori?"

Kakashi rolled his eye, but stood up with the blond to help him figure out the flimsy thing. His tone belied that he'd been meaning to ask for a while now, which was somewhat amusing to picture.

"You know, you'd make a good hoka-"

"No thanks."

* * *

The meeting room was far too small for how loud the occupants were. Naruto muttered obscenities under his breath as he rubbed his hands against his ears helplessly. After most of the civilians and shinobi finally began turning in for the night, the _politics_ had started. Naruto was extremely willing to discuss what to do with the invaders, _he mostly wanted to annihilate the sand, since Orochimaru had been dealt with already and that meant the dissolution of the sound_ , but it seemed that even that much was too complicated.

They had pulled Naruto away from his dilly-dallying by the third's corpse - he'd finally _looked_ at the man, and he was infinitely proud by the smile he died with. They were urgent, something about there being little time to waste.

But upon looking around, none of the speakers - except maybe the other blond one, Ino-something - seemed much in a hurry to leave. The room was occupied solely by Naruto, his Anbu guard detail, and the prominent clan-heads. As far as Naruto was aware - and he was certain about this - he had final say. Final say in _everything_.

The entire point of this nonsense was to make sure he didn't accidentally disown a clan or something, since they could _technically_ leave, and that obviously wasn't a good thing to happen. Well, that was the point of it, but that wasn't what was happening, because he was being completely ignored and they were shouting at each other.

"Can we _not_ , please?" Naruto asked, interrupting whatever tangent the Inuzuka clan head had found herself on.

The Hyuuga head scoffed. "Have respect for your-"

"- _hokage_ ," Naruto finished. "I've heard nothing but bickering - I'm only twelve years old, but even I know that we should just go ahead and finish off the sand, since - y'know - they're nothing now. No kazekage, no good ninja, nothing! What is there to even argue about?"

"There's logistics issues present with an undertaking even half that size," the Nara clan head answered. "Regardless even of that, the daimyo of Kaze no Kuni presents a hindrance to annexation - never mind the weakening of our patrol structure and the over-extension of our forces and capital if we are to assume we did as such. The lands under the perusal of Sunagakure are far too vast for us to add to our own without increasing our own risks of being invaded unfavourably."

"I respectfully disagree," the Sarutobi clan head said, this speaker Naruto recognized as Asuma Sarutobi, the son of the late hokage. "We can permanently spare more men for securing Kaze no Kuni than Sunagakure has left - there's seriously no question about it, it might take a lot of manpower to handle another country, but _we are Konoha!_ We have manpower in spades!"

"It's not like we can do nothing," Ino-something interjected, "leaving Sunagakure as it is wastes a valuable opportunity we will _not_ see again, but as Shikaku said-"

"Why is the daimyo a problem?" Naruto asked, deciding he'd gotten as much information listening to the heads argue as he was ever going to get.

"He has his own military, for one," Ino-something answered. "It doesn't matter as much as his dominion over the land. Control of the towns, the cities, the taxes..."

"It's difficult to remove the control a daimyo holds over his subjects," the Hyuuga head said. "Bereft of a master, servants naturally aspire towards anarchy."

"But none of that makes it _impossible_ , right?" Naruto asked. He was clearly out of his element, but he only needed to understand what was happening enough to make the decision that he wanted to make. Naruto wouldn't be the one handling the logistics, and that was fine by him.

A small pause, alien to the blond, as the clan heads looked amongst themselves, waiting for dissenters.

" _No_ ," the Nara head said distastefully. "I suppose not."

"Then that's what we're doing."

"Just because we can, does not mean we should," the Nara head said.

Naruto sighed, grumpily running a hand through his hair. "Look, I _seriously_ don't care right now. I was just a genin this morning, and I'm totally out of my element here - but _we're going to get them back_. Those _fucking_ sand ninja came to _our_ home, they attacked _and_ killed _our_ family, and I'm not just going to stand here and let them get away with _murdering our hokage_! I wasn't fucking ready for this, and they won't be fucking ready either!"

Someone opened their mouth to speak, but Naruto wasn't having it. "That's final, got it?" No comment. "Cool. You guys can just stay here and do what you do, but since I'm just some stupid angry kid, I'm just going to go and calm down, and maybe make sure my friends are still alive. Bye."

Naruto got out of his chair and left the room. The silence left in his wake didn't leave himself feeling any better about his outburst, but if he was going to have to deal with being hokage, then everyone else was going to have to deal with the fact their hokage was a child.

* * *

"The second door on the right, Hokage-sama."

"Uh, right. Thanks," Naruto said, awkwardly walking past the bowing nurse. Plenty of people - mostly civilians - didn't know he was the godaime yet, but enough people greeted him as such when he'd walked through the street towards the hospital that there would only be so much time until it had circulated.

When he'd originally been named as the third's successor (it was more of a proof-of-concept thing, just making his apprenticeship official rather than expecting it to actually _happen_ any time soon) only the jounin had been informed and it had stayed that way. Obviously, whatever filter had existed disappeared the moment he had actually become hokage, if even the occasional nurse knew.

Naruto creaked open the door that'd been pointed out to him, and glanced inside.

Sakura had evidently made it before him, as she was asleep in a chair besides the bed. There was no reason for him to enter, then - Sasuke was dead-asleep and he didn't want to wake either of them up. As long as he'd seen them alive with his own eyes that was enough for him. He closed the door.

"Ah," Naruto quickly turned back to look for the nurse. "Excuse me, miss - do you know which room Ino Yamanaka would be in?" She kindly pointed it out, it was in the same hallway, and Naruto thanked her.

Just as last time, he gently creaked the door open and glanced inside.

"Hey, who's there?"

"Uh, it's me, Naruto. I came to visit Sasuke, but... y'know, he's sleeping. Are you okay?" Naruto asked, walking in and closing the door. He didn't really visit with a plan in mind, he'd originally just wanted to blow off steam, and he felt a bit guilty after the talk with Kakashi.

She snorted. "I'm _super_ bored. You're my only visitor," she gave him an odd look, "we don't really talk, huh? I thought maybe dad would visit, but I guess he's busy. He _is_ a clan head, after all!" Ino's haughty look really suited her, Naruto noticed.

"Uh-huh."

"Sit." Ino rolled her eyes. He did. "So uh, what's it like?"

Naruto blinked. "What's what like?"

"Don't be dumb," she snarked, "what's it like having the _kyuubi_ inside of you?"

Oooh, right. After everything that'd happened that day Naruto had totally forgotten that he'd (well, it was mostly the Ichibi) released that secret. "It's interesting, in a way," Naruto said. "The fox is a big ol' idiot. Always yelling at me, being angry, that kind of thing."

"You can talk to it?" she asked, sitting up and adjusting her pillow.

"Only when I use its power," Naruto answered. "Sometimes when I'm sleeping it pulls me in to my head, too. It's fun though, he acts all big and tough but he can't hurt me, so the fox is a bit of a joke."

"...uh-huh."

"What happened to you?" Naruto asked.

"I think I'm lucky to be alive," Ino said. "Unlike apparently _everyone_ else, _I_ didn't know there was going to be an invasion, so I wasn't even wearing my gear. I can understand you and Sasuke wearing it, but Sakura? Chouji? Hell, even Lee had on his tights - and he was injured! Do none of you relax at all? Sheesh..." Naruto snickered.

Naruto awkwardly tapped his knee. Socializing late at night with someone he really didn't know wasn't really his thing, even if she _was_ actually pretty nice.

"Well, I should probably go-" Naruto began to get up.

"Nope!" Ino said, reaching over and grabbing his arm.

Shadows around the room seemed to flicker and Naruto hastily clicked his fingers as he was pulled back down to his seat.

"Why'd you do that?" Ino asked, eyebrow cocked.

"N-no reason," Naruto said, "habit."

"Say, that haori looks awfully familiar..." Ino said.

"It was a gift." Naruto shrugged defensively.

"Are you okay, Naruto? I mean - _I_ was poisoned, so I'm in the hospital - and isn't that just _so_ weak, by the way? A tiny little needle hit me in the arm, and bam - life threatening! I'll be totally fine by tomorrow, but you know how it is, gotta stay in the hospital and let them make sure, whatever."

Naruto nodded. "I hate hospitals."

Ino laughed, "me too!"

The door to the room burst open and a large blond man made his way in, only pausing when he laid his eyes on Naruto. Embarrassed by his earlier outburst, Naruto wasn't terribly happy to see him.

"Errhh, Ho-" Naruto glared, " _Naruto_ -san! What would you be doing here at this hour, I wonder?" he looked pointedly at Ino.

"Daaad! It's not like that, sheesh. Where have you been all day, huh?!"

"I'm just gonna..."

"No you don't!" Both Yamanaka's paused, blinked and glanced at the other.

"Like father like daughter, I guess," Naruto joked, slowly sitting back down.

"How do you two know each other?"

"Dad, I know Naruto from the academy, remember? We were in the same class, and I definitely said his name at least onc-"

"Why were you talking about me?!" Naruto asked.

"Shhhh! _That doesn't matter!_ " Ino said, curling her hands into her sheets.

"I think it matters," the elder Yamanaka interjected. Naruto nodded. "Anyway, I shouldn't have held you up, Uzumaki-san. I need to talk to my daughter, so if you would..."

"Of course, Yamanaka-san. Bye Ino," he gave a short wave as he eagerly left his chair, itching to get some me-time.

"You should visit sometime, Naruto!" she suggested, drooping slightly as he left.

"Maybe." Naruto said, leaving the room. He could hear conversation starting as he closed the door, but he wasn't going to eavesdrop. The door across the hall opened - the one Naruto remembered Sasuke being behind - and Sakura with her unmistakable pink mop of hair closed the door gently from the outside.

"Err, hey," Naruto greeted awkwardly.

She blinked, rubbing her tired eyes. "Oh, hi Naruto. I'm just getting Sasuke a glass of water."

"Don't mind me," Naruto said, "I was just leaving." Sakura didn't press for conversation, and just left to do as she said.

Compared to the short conversation he'd just had with Ino, that was a bit... lacklustre.

"So, Cat..." he patiently waited the split-second it took for the female, purple-haired Anbu to appear in front of him, kneeling. "Jeez, be at ease," she stood. "Is there anything else I actually have to do today, or can I just go to bed?"

She cocked her head.

"Do I _have_ to sleep in the mansion?"

She nodded.

"Fine, but shunshin me please."

In a flash of movement that almost left him tumbling to the floor - and he would have if he wasn't caught - she did so. "Thanks."

The bed was large though unfamiliar, and the room was filled with all the little trinkets he'd had in his apartment. His little frog-wallet in particular caught his eye, situated on the bedside drawers. Someone had evidently gone through and moved everything for him, and presumably - moved everything that used to be here out. That was a somber thought.

"It's comfortable at least," he said, testing the mattress. "I could just... imagine..." despite the apparent cheesiness of the act, his eyes forcefully shut of their own volition as his head hit the pillow, still dressed and above the covers. In his defense, and he would definitely defend himself, it had been a seriously long and eventful day.

The watching Anbu merely took their places in the comfortable shadows of the room, and if one paid close attention - they may have heard a snicker or two.

* * *

"Urghhhhghh.. _what_?!" Naruto bolted upright, rather abruptly woken up due to the freakishly loud alarms playing besides- "oh, you asshole."

The male boar-masked Anbu bowed in faux apology, stowing away the dozen alarm clocks into one of the bedside drawers.

"Why would you do that? Seriously?" Naruto made some frustrated noises and struggled to make his back comfortable on the pillow. Strangely, he didn't remember taking off his haori, or getting under the covers - but there he was. "I didn't actually see the time," he muttered.

The man responded by pulling one of the clocks back out from the drawer and presenting it to the blond. "It's six. Why do I need to be up at six?"

Boar cocked his head.

"You are all such _great_ conversationalists," Naruto said. He glanced towards the bedroom door as it swung open, and another Anbu walked in carefully with a breakfast tray.

"...I get breakfast in bed?"

* * *

"Do I _have_ to?" Naruto muttered, glancing outside at the far-too-large crowd below. "Can't you just, I don't know, tell them that I'm hokage now and be done with it? _You_ know that _they_ know I'm hokage anyway, right?"

"You're not going to war before you've even had your coronation."

Naruto groaned. "C'mon Shikaku, I'll give you a promotion..?"

"What could you possibly promote me to?"

Naruto shrugged. "I'm sure you could think of something."

The Nara squinted. "Be that as it may... it's for the best if we get this over and done with quickly. If nothing else, you need to release knowledge of your heritage - it will work towards appeasing those that are less than happy with your appointment, and that can only benefit us."

"Alright, fine."

"Good."

Naruto frowned. "...what am I supposed to say again?"

"...your _speech_. You do have a speech, right?"

The blond twitched. "U-uh, yeah."

"...Hokage-sama, listen."

* * *

"I'm glad they cleared me in time," Ino said, rubbing her sore arm and wandering through the crowd with her teammate, who'd picked her up from the hospital. "Who do you think the new hokage is?"

Shikamaru - her lazy, Nara teammate - shrugged. "I don't know, but they were picked awfully quickly. Now, Chouji should be just... hey, Chouji!"

"Shikamaru, Ino!" Chouji greeted, waving one arm with the other armed with a bag of potato chips. Team 7, sans Naruto, were beside him.

"Kakashi-sensei," Ino and Shikamaru nodded respectfully, "Sakura, Sasuke." Kakashi greeted them with a short wave.

"Hey," Sakura greeted. Sasuke grunted in their direction vaguely, his left arm in a sling. "Have either of you seen Naruto?"

They each shook their heads. "Not today, no," Ino answered.

"Oh," Sakura muttered. "Congratulations on the promotion, Shikamaru." Sakura eyed the vest tastefully, it did look quite good on him. Sasuke grunted again.

"Thanks, Shino was promoted too I believe," Shikamaru said. The other genin perked up.

"Really?" Chouji asked, "nice. He deserved it."

"Yeah," Ino nodded. "Shino's cool."

A short silence, the genin torn between waiting patiently and striking up a conversation.

"So..." Sakura said, "who do you think the new hokage is? I would've guessed sensei here, but..."

"I wouldn't want it anyway," Kakashi said, giving a brief chuckle. "Maybe it's Naruto? You all know how much he says he'll be hokage."

Everyone made their own unique noise of dismissal.

"Not that I'm any better, but Naruto's _twelve_ , Kakashi-sensei," Sakura said, dismissing the idea. The glint in Kakashi's eye seemed rather amused.

"Could it be one of the clan heads?" Ino asked.

"Could be," Shikamaru answered. "The third was the head of the Sarutobi clan, after all. It would explain why Asuma-sensei isn't here..."

Here, being the central park of Konoha. It was set directly behind the hokage tower, with a large stone podium a dozen heads high stretching a small distance from the tower exterior. There was a window besides the door from the tower to the podium, but it was simply too difficult to make out any of the figures moving within. The park was big enough that almost the all of Konoha's inhabitants had fit comfortably within it - that being tens of thousands of individuals - only missing those recently sent on patrol and those building and guarding the reconstruction of the village walls.

"Of course," Shikamaru corrected, "sensei is more likely merely here with someone else."

"Like Kurenai-sensei?" Ino asked, hiding a smirk with her hand.

"Like Kurenai-sensei." Team 10 shared a laugh.

* * *

"Good luck, Hokage-sama."

"Thanks, Shikaku." Naruto slowly placed his hand on the door, and after a slight hesitation, pushed. The bickering of the crowds ceased all at once as they spied the door opening, and Naruto - clad in his navy clothing, with the third's haori and scarf, stepped out.

He didn't immediately speak, instead he walked further down the platform, until he could easily see each and every individual... okay, there was a _lot_ of people. He gulped.

"Alright," he muttered, "one chance to get this right." He tapped the stone with his foot and seals all over the platform fluttered into existence for just a moment.

"Hello." His voice boomed across the crowd.

"..." Their stares intensified.

Well, that was troubling. What was he meant to talk about? Was he meant to introduce himself?

...Shikaku literally _just_ now gave him some tips, and he'd already blanked them. Whoops.

He gulped, frowned when he could somewhat hear his own gulp off the reverb, and gave himself a moment to calm his beating heart. Focus.

"My name is Naruto Uzumaki. I've chased the position of Hokage for years, and was once apprenticed to the third hokage. That apprenticeship lasted less than a year, but he named me his _successor_ shortly before his death."

He expected the crowd's initial reactions. There was an evident lack of support. The citizens immediately yelled unsanitary remarks and began making a mess of things, shoving one another aside, and generally being pissed off. The shinobi he could see were not so aggressive, but plainly stated, there was a general consensus of unhappy.

"...There was a reason for this."

The crowd quietened just enough for him to speak, interest piqued, even if they were not pleased with the appointment. He could spy his team and his closer friends huddled together amidst the crowds, just enough to measure their expressions of utter shock and confusion. 'Come on now,' Naruto mused, 'I told you this would happen from the beginning.'

"As many of you found out during the invasion, and many more of you knew since my birth, I am the jinchuuriki of the kyuubi. Within me I contain the full, dangerous might of the nine-tailed fox. For this reason, the third hokage adopted me as a child..." he paused, to allow the mutterings to quiet down. When they didn't, he coughed into his closed fist and raised his voice. " _WHAT YOU MAY NOT KNOW,_ is the reason the kyuubi was sealed into me!"

He saw the widened eyes of his sensei down below, and sent the man the best smirk he could. "Only an Uzumaki can contain the kyuubi, for its power is too great, too concentrated, too corrosive for any human but one of greater constitution. It is a great boon, then, that the fourth hokage's child, born the same night as the attack of the kyuubi, was an Uzumaki!"

For a long, drawn out moment, Naruto regretted speaking so plainly. The chatter that he'd grown used to having to deal with quietened to nothing, and he had far too many pairs of eyes drawn to him in a silence too eerie to be comfortable.

When the yelling started, he accepted the complaints with a sprinkling of salt, after all; many of these people had grown to blame him for the loss of their friends and family for the last twelve years. He hadn't even said anything to dissuade their notion that he was at fault, he merely laid out the facts. He'd accept their words, their hate, and carry it with him, so that they did not need to. He didn't need to be mature or intelligent to do that.

He clicked his fingers, and one of his guard appeared kneeling in front of him, carrying the real symbol of his position delicately within his arms.

"Thank you, Squirrel," Naruto murmured, taking the hokage's hat reverently and placing it on his head.

"In two days," he said, just loud enough to be heard over the complaints, the swears, and the confusion. "We go to war with Suna."

He turned, haori billowing in a sudden breeze, and he left his people to their thoughts.

* * *

 **AN** :

Review, favorite, follow, all that. Rewriting and replacing the humor with plot and hints to the future is very satisfying, as the quality is improving very noticeably. This is all thanks to criticism, so lend me some.


	3. The Fifth Acquaints Himself

Fix.

 **Chapter 2**

"Leadership is the capacity to translate vision  
into reality."

* * *

Naruto left the podium as soon as he was comfortable enough to move under the weight of the thousands of pairs of eyes. That was rather soon, because he was developing an appetite for lunch that coloured his perception of time.

"Hello, Uzumaki-san."

Naruto, startled after closing the door, hit his head on the wooden entrance on reflex.

"Ow... hi?" The man that scared him was old, and only vaguely familiar. He was covered in bandages, had brown hair, one arm in a sling and a cane in the other.

Naruto rubbed the new bump on his head, holding in a wince.

"My name is Danzo Shimura. I used to be the third's-"

"Cat," Naruto said. The Anbu appeared in front of him, a different cat this time - a male with brown hair - and he noticed Danzo's questioning gaze. "Relax, I'm just hungry," Naruto explained. "I need some ramen, maybe half a dozen bowls, whatever the special of the day is. If Ichiraku's isn't open, figure something out... now, what did you want Danzo-san?"

"I..." he seemed surprised.

"I haven't eaten today, sorry," Naruto said, somewhat sincere. The bump on his head had already gone down, so he comfortably leaned against the door. "I probably have a schedule to keep, so if you could..."

"You do not," Danzo said smoothly, "I inquired prior. I am here to see the new hokage for myself."

"Well, I'm here..."

"Why are you so willing to commit to war against the sand?" The question was abrupt and searing in intensity.

"Huh?"

Danzo frowned. "You are the opposite of Hiruzen, you are not what I expected out of his apprentice. The most glaring difference is the attitude regarding war, and I think your willingness to cause one is unfounded and uncultivated."

"Well, I-I mean-"

"I approve."

"What?" Naruto said. In truth, he wasn't sure he could have given the man's question a logical answer. "Well, that's... good. What do you do again?"

Danzo glanced knowingly towards the shaded corners of the room. "I produce Anbu."

His tone sent shivers down the blond's spine. "You train Anbu, huh?" Naruto asked, he didn't even want to consider the possible repercussions of 'producing' a ninja.

Danzo nodded slowly. "In a way," he answered, "my division was never officially established." He tapped his cane against the boarded flooring, and half a dozen plainly masked shinobi - dressed in the same cloaks as the Anbu often wore, but without a standard uniform - appeared behind the old man, kneeling similarly to the way that the Anbu did to Naruto. "As you can see, the end result is similar."

Naruto frowned. He and the third had their disagreements - they weren't the same person, after all - but he always had his reasons. "Why not?" he asked, crossing his arms. "Why didn't the old man let it through?" This was a lot less casual than it'd seemed from the get-go. Acting on a whim, he clicked his fingers and his three-man protection detail (usually four, but Cat was off getting ramen) appeared neatly around him, standing at attention and facing the room's other occupants stiffly.

Danzo didn't so much as flinch, expecting as much. "The third disliked my methods, but you and the third are different men, are you not?"

It was a gamble, then. Naruto disregarded the assumed 'I did it anyway' with a shake of his head. _Somehow_ , he knew that whatever the man was doing he'd keep doing regardless of what he said. "I guess I'm just gonna ask this again. What do you do?" if the man was secretive enough to continue with his organisation even without the third's permission, then it was unlikely Naruto would get a full explanation, and he knew he should take any answer he gets with a sprinkling of salt.

"Primarily, I adopt promising children that don't have homes," Danzo answered, "occasionally, I may invite certain promising individuals that _do_ have families, with permission. I teach them my personalized curriculum and train them to exceed their peers. The individuals in my employ are strong, Uzumaki-san. I would be elated to have the permission to expand my forces in order to help you with your endeavours. War is something I have taken part in, and researched extensively." Danzo bowed slightly.

Honestly, in a bit of a weird way Naruto kind of liked the man. He gave orphans a home, after all - and more shinobi was more shinobi. "This is all kind of sudden..." Naruto murmured, "what makes your training better? You didn't answer my question about the third, by the way."

"The third didn't like my methods, and I will not explain them to you."

"... _Thanks_."

"You're welcome, Uzumaki-san."

"...Right. How many shinobi do you have?" Naruto asked. There couldn't be too many if the third hadn't put a stop to it, right?

"I have a few hundred individuals trained sufficiently enough to at least compare to the standard chunin," Danzo explained. "They are sprinkled within your employ, for the most part." Seemed like Danzo had gone for the 'honesty is the best policy' school of thought. Naruto doubted he was so open to the third.

"That seems dangerous," Naruto muttered. "Let me guess - they'll take your orders over mine?" Danzo didn't deign to respond, so Naruto sighed and muttered something derogatory under his breath. "Alright," he said, glancing across the line of kneeling shinobi behind the old man, "not a single cat, huh? Okay then. All of you, get up. Stand. _Rise now_."

Hesitation. One or two of them shifted fractionally, but recovered their position quickly. A nod from Danzo, and they smoothly stood, their cloaks covering their stances.

Naruto was also hesitant, but he wanted to give the man a chance. "Well, it won't be the first time I let someone else handle the whole 'ordering people around' thing. Do you have papers for me to sign?"

The man's first obvious sign of emotion crossed his face, a slight smile. "I do."

"Alright," Naruto said. He looked to his left, "Cat! Get me a pen," he looked to his right, "Squirrel! Order a couple hundred nicely decorated Anbu masks." He was now left with one guard.

Both quickly returned, and Naruto was given a cute little pink pen with a fluffy feather on the end. He gave Cat an odd look, but didn't comment.

"Thanks. Let me see those forms, Danzo."

"Of course, Uzumaki-san. Rest assured that in return, I will do my best to offer advice and support in the wars to come." Danzo pledged.

"Wars, huh?"

* * *

With a bowl of steaming ramen in his hands, a feline Anbu visibly tailing him holding another several, and Ino-something leading the way, Naruto journeyed underground.

"I like miso," Naruto said, picking masterfully at the noodles with his chopsticks. "Keep it up, Cat." As they travelled further beneath ground, the artificial lighting grew more prominent, and the amount of shinobi they walked by increased in volume. The ramen was especially nice because it combated the cold down here, and he'd sent the third's haori to a tailor (via Cat) to get the kanji for 'godaime hokage' printed on it, which ultimately had the effect of leaving him less covered than usual.

"Hokage-sama?"

"Hokage-sama."

"Hokage-sama!"

That was more or less all he'd heard as he descended down the floors of the torture and interrogation headquarters. It had a nice ring to it, and Naruto didn't personally believe it would ever get old. Ino's dad finally directed him away from the staircase and across a hall.

"He's just behind here," Ino-something said, knocking on the door. Across the top of the door were printed the words 'Volatile Prisoner Containment.' Someone from within opened the door, moved out of their way and bowed when she saw Naruto.

"Hokage-sama."

"Hey," Naruto said, nodding back. "He doesn't look comfortable," he noted, looking at the large one-way mirror decorating the far wall. Suna's jinchuuriki sat on the other side, locked into a thick metal chair which was itself locked into the concrete ground. "I'm going in, then."

"I don't think-" Ino's dad tried to say something, but he wasn't having it.

"I'm the one that beat him," Naruto reminded, "and look at him - poor guy is all locked up. I bet he can hardly breathe."

Ino-something didn't bother responding to that, but instead took his leave. "Until you need me next, Hokage-sama."

"Bye Ino."

He left with a grunt, and the room's other occupant laughed, a woman in a chunin's uniform with brown hair and plain features. "His name is Inoichi, Hokage-sama."

"Oh, thanks!" Naruto said. "Knock if someone comes for me." He quickly made for the door to Gaara's cell.

"Of course, Hokage-sama - but first," Naruto halted, "I think you should know something."

"Yes?" Naruto asked.

"The ichibi's container, well he's... how do I put this?" she muttered, "he's insane."

"Oh," Naruto said, "I know."

Opening the locks made sounds much too loud and out of place for the otherwise quiet room, and Naruto passed through the doorway and into the much colder room with haste.

He could feel the redhead's gaze as soon as he entered his cell, and he heard as the chunin closed and locked the door from the outside.

"Yo... Gaara. Cool place you have here."

He received only a glare in response. Bad pun, then.

"You alright, dude?" Naruto sat down on a plain iron chair - the only other piece of furniture in the room - and leaned forward. Step one, he should probably try to make friends with him.

" _Why are you here?_ " Gaara asked. His voice was distorted, gravelly, and he had the look of someone completely defeated and frustrated.

"Well, I... uh..." Naruto coughed, "I was just... wondering a couple things, y'know? We're both jinchuuriki, you know that much, right?"

Gaara nodded - as much as he could with his neck in a vice, anyway. He wasn't a fan of talking unnecessarily, apparently. That suited Naruto fine. He probably should've given this more thought before he came in, though.

"The sand haven't even bothered asking for you back." It was a lie, but it still incited little response out of the redhead. "They don't like you very much, do they? My village didn't like me much either, they still don't, really."

The redhead cocked his head, though it had little effect as chained up as he was. " _They made you hokage, why?_ " Evidently, he'd noticed the robe and drawn the correct conclusion.

Tapping his knee, Naruto chuckled blandly. "I'm not really meant to be hokage, I mean... I was nominated as the..." the blond cringed, but shook it off. "The old man made me his successor a little early. You know how it is."

" _They have acknowledged you._ " Something unpleasant coloured Gaara's tone.

"W-well, not _really."_ Memories of the unpleasant response his coronation elicited swept through the forefront of his mind. "They're not very happy, but that's how it is for us, being a jinchuuriki." The blond leaned back in his crooked, uncomfortable chair and crossed his arms. "What's it like for you, in Suna?"

The captive hummed a short, low tune. " _I enjoy it. The people fear me._ " A ghost of a grin skirted the redheads jaw.

Naruto blanched.

An interested curiosity etched its way across the redhead's face. " _You force the nine-tails, do you not?_ "

"I do," Naruto nodded.

" _I would never control my mother,_ " Gaara said, aghast.

"I need the power."

" _For_ what?" Gaara asked. If Naruto was more inclined to trust his hearing, he would say the jinchuuriki sounded excited.

"I don't know," Naruto shrugged. In truth, he didn't have any real and developed motives - at least not yet. "I just need it. Why do you need to be acknowledged?" Naruto would have several answers for the question, but hearing Gaara's own motives could only prove useful and interesting.

For a moment, Gaara remained silent, likely weighing his choices. When it finally seemed that he wouldn't be receiving an answer, the redhead nodded.

" _I just want to live, to be alive._ "

Slowly, Naruto nodded. "I underst-"

" _No,"_ Gaara said. " _You don't. You're acknowledged._ "

"Gaara-"

" _According to the Sand, I'm not alive. I am not a person to them, but a weapon; I am their biju, their tailed beast. I can only prove_ my _existence with death. Attacking my captors is my proof that I am alive, that I'm not some mindless weapon._ You will not take that away from me."

Naruto leapt to his feet. "Woah, woah, nobody's gonna take that away from-" he paused, quickly reconsidering, "actually-"

" _I am alive,_ " Gaara's blunt tone was terse and aggressive. If he weren't so constrained, Naruto would be doubting his safety.

The blond nodded. "You are alive, but so am I." He crossed his arms, "do you see me killing people?"

Gaara squinted.

Naruto sighed. "Well, you've gotta kill for the right reasons, you know?"

He nodded. " _To prove my existence_."

"...I'm not getting through to you, am I?" Naruto muttered. "Look," he lent his hand, as if the redhead could shake it, "come and follow me around for a few days. You'll get it."

" _You mean to release me?_ "

A nod, and Gaara wasn't sure how to respond when he heard someone step in behind him and release his binds.

"Thanks, Cat." Naruto coughed into his hand, raising the other one for a shake. "Let's try again, first impressions are important. I'm Naruto Namikaze, Godaime Hokage."

Released of his binds but still suspicious, the confused jinchuuriki stood, raised his own hand and they shook. "Gaara."

He'd heard that most other villages lacked surnames - but even the hokage's son? He shuffled that knowledge away for later.

"I'm going to Suna, Gaara. If you truly want to kill people, would you like to come and kill more of your own? To truly make a name for yourself, and draw the acknowledgement of the Leaf?"

" _I'm not sure I understand._ " While it didn't seem that the redhead was completely against the idea, he didn't seem terribly happy about it. But then, he was just in captivity. Naruto wouldn't be very happy either.

The blond waved off an Anbu to get the poor kid some water, and tossed an arm about his shoulders.

"The Leaf loves everyone who protects them, and everyone who fights for them." The blond allowed himself a fierce grin, "the Sand attacked us, so I'm taking the Leaf, and I'm going to kill them, take every little scrap of land both Suna and the rest of that shitty country has, and then-" he clapped the redhead on the shoulder, "-we'll gain some crazy acknowledgement out of it. You in?"

For just an instant, Naruto thought he saw the most devilish smirk cross the jinchuuriki's face, but the next instant he seemed just as conflicted as before. The blond shook his head, confident he was imagining things, and-

He was interrupted by a knocking, the door to Gaara's cell opening, and then by an Anbu kneeling beside them.

"Hokage-sama," they said, "your teammates are waiting for you outside of your office."

Ah, right. He'd specifically told the receptionist that he wanted to talk to them and to warn him when they inevitably came to visit.

"Thanks Cat... I'll be there eventually," Naruto nodded. "Say, you're about the right size... do you need that mask? That cloak too?"

The Anbu in question reared back in vain.

* * *

Naruto left behind the spluttering chunin and utilized cat-transport to shunshin back to his office. After carefully relaying instructions to Gaara - who was apparently willing to do as told for now - the redhead hid auspiciously behind a bonsai tree in the corner of the room. As he was probably hungry, Naruto allowed him one of his last bowls of ramen.

"Alright," Naruto placed a fresh bowl of ramen on the desk - the Anbu had so kindly been using a minor katon ninjutsu to keep it warm - and cracked open a new pair of chopsticks. "Let them in."

The large doors guarding his sanctuary slid open with a groan befitting their extravagant size. On the other side, Naruto spied familiar members of team 7 and team 10, sitting about a row of rather comfortable looking couches outside in the waiting room.

"Where the hell is my loveseat?" he grumbled, leaning back and muttering curses beneath his breath. His office contained two couches - one along the wall to his right and one to the left, but they didn't look nearly as comfortable as the couches outside of his office. "Hey everyone! Come on in." They did so in surprisingly short order.

"Hokage-sama," Shikamaru said, bowing before his desk. In fact, that seemed to be all it took for all of the other genin to bow too, even Sasuke. That was both uplifting, and more than anything else, surprising. It was also slightly terrifying.

Naruto noticed some interesting glances towards the bonsai tree in the corner, but he paid it no heed.

"Hey," Naruto greeted, waving the arm that wasn't using chopsticks. Yes, he was eating - he'd been on the move ever since his speech, and his brain was in too preoccupied a state while inspiring Gaara to dare eat more than a single bowl. "So, I'm hokage now... what else do you need to know?"

The genin spluttered obscenities in response.

"What do you even _mean_ you're hokage now?" Sakura asked.

" _How_ are you hokage? Your speech was terrible, by the way," Sasuke said.

"The speech was hilarious," Ino softly rebuked, "but why didn't you tell me about it last night? Well, I guess it _was_ pretty awesome finding out like that..." Ino said, earning herself some looks, of which she ignored.

"You met last night?" Chouji asked, amusement colouring his tone.

"Naruto visited the hospital," Sakura explained sourly. The boys 'ah'ed.

"He did?" Sasuke asked, glancing pointedly at the hokage.

"You were sleeping," Sakura said, waving off his question.

Sasuke frowned, "why didn't you wake me up?"

Meanwhile, Naruto just watched and listened as they bickered amongst themselves. If nothing else, it gave him time to eat, and he was already half-way done with his last bowl of ramen.

"So!" Naruto said, interrupting Sakura's blushing response, "how is everyone? There _are_ seats, by the way."

Chouji helpfully dragged the far-away edge of the couch to his right further in, until it was parallel to Naruto's desk, and the genin sat on it - it was easily big enough for all five of them to squeeze in together.

"I guess that works?" Naruto said, wondering if he was meant to be offended by people moving stuff in his office. Maybe? He'd have to ask Cat about it later.

"Thanks Chouji," Sakura, Ino and Shikamaru said. Chouji grinned in response, a slight red dusting his cheeks as he sat down and continued to snack on his potato chips.

"So," Sakura said, "...jinchuuriki."

"How does it make you so strong?" Sasuke asked.

"Why was it a secret?" Shikamaru asked.

"Want a chip?" Chouji asked.

Ino remained silent, seemingly satisfied with the other questions.

"Uh..." Naruto muttered, "okay. Sakura; yeah, blame my dad. Sasuke; because I'm stealing all of the kyuubi's chakra. Shikamaru; the third hokage did that so that I wouldn't grow up around misunderstanding children. Chouji; yes please." Naruto was given a chip, and Chouji was given a high-five. "Very cool."

Naruto swore he heard something from the bonsai tree. Why on earth would that be?

"It didn't really work did it?" Shikamaru observed. Naruto shrugged in response, nothing to add.

"Namikaze," Ino said abruptly, "that's another thing. Your dad is the fourth hokage, doesn't that mean you're in his will or something?"

"Uh," Naruto said, "I haven't checked yet? I don't think he had a will."

"As next of kin, you should get your parents belongings regardless," Shikamaru said. "You should check that later."

"Will do."

"Is that why you were always late to the academy?" Chouji asked, "because you were training with the third hokage?"

"Yeah," Naruto nodded. He winked, "good observation."

Sasuke looked oddly pleased. "When are we going to war with Suna?" the Uchiha asked.

Seeing as it was Sasuke asking, Naruto took a moment to slurp on some of his noodles. "Um," he swallowed, "the third's funeral is tomorrow, and then the day after that - well, Shikaku's still organising everything, but as far as I know that's when we initiate."

"Can I come?" Sasuke asked, a spectacular glint in his eyes.

"Sure," Naruto said, rather amused. He wasn't actually that surprised, a lot of shinobi made their fame during times of war (which honestly sounded right up Sasuke's alley) - but this war would probably be over so soon that most of the shinobi involved wouldn't even have that opportunity.

"How many shinobi?" Shikamaru asked, "on either side."

"That's a good one," Naruto muttered. "We lost almost a thousand shinobi when the sand invaded," all the genin collectively winced, "..and the sand/sound coalition lost ten thousand. Don't be too surprised, we knew they were coming-" he noticed their looks, "well, the chunin, jounin, the hokage and _I_ knew they were coming - and we had so much time to set up in advance that it's honestly pretty fucking sad that we lost so many people."

It hit Naruto that he was a bit disconnected. He frowned, noting that while the genin flinched, he hadn't. Something for later.

"So yeah. It's being organised, we'll probably..." he leaned back in his chair - which was extremely comfortable, by the way - and counted in his head, "...send ten thousand back."

"That's dangerous," Shikamaru stated, narrowing his eyes speculatively.

"Your dad's organising it all," Naruto said with a shrug. "You guys have any more questions? I kind of want to go visit Iruka after this."

They shook their head for the most part, but Naruto suffered through another few questions before they all left to go about their businesses.

Sakura, however, remained at the door as their friends departed.

"Hey, uh, Naruto..." she said, turning around and fidgeting with her hair.

"Yeah?" Naruto asked. He narrowed his eyes slightly and leaned forward. He hadn't seen this side of Sakura for a while, and he thought it was something she did exclusively around Sasuke.

Sakura muttered something under her breath as she steeled herself. "Do you want to go out on a date, Naruto? Just you and me?" she asked, crossing her arms.

"Huh?" What? He tried cleaning his ears out. "Call me crazy, but I thought you just-"

"You heard me."

"I, uh... um..." Naruto stuttered, leaning back in his chair and blinking repeatedly. He... honestly? He _didn't have time_. He wanted to talk to Iruka, he had another meeting with Danzo later, he wanted to help organise the third's funeral, he... the more he thought about it, the busier he realized he was.

Shit.

"I... _can't_." Naruto muttered, hanging his head in shame. "Trust me, Sakura-chan, I'm just too busy."

Sakura huffed, blowing a lock of hair away from her eyes. She waved off his response without seeming particularly bothered, "it's fine, I just had to know I tried, you know?" Sakura walked off the way the rest had, leaving Naruto to sit in silence.

"It's only because I'm Hokage, isn't it..?" he muttered to himself. He honestly only refused because he was too busy, and he did seriously like her, but maybe it was time to consider other options anyway? He _was_ hokage now, which - as messed up as the thought was - kind of meant nobody was off limits, right? Ehh... he'd have time soon enough to think about that kind of thing, but it was a very awkward thought to make.

Right now, he just wanted to find Iruka. Danzo had been kind enough to offer the information when he'd asked, and apparently classes were on today despite his coronation, they were just scheduled for a bit later than usual.

Next stop then, the academy.

* * *

 **AN** :

chunnin33: I'm glad you enjoy the premise!  
AkabaneKazama: I'm suuuper glad you find it funny!

I'm very grateful to all the other reviews too.

I hope you find Danzo's response to this interesting. Naruto doesn't know a damned thing about the shit Danzo's pulled, like the attempted assassination of the third hokage, so he doesn't see any reason to distrust the man (except maybe his unwillingness to divulge information) and therefore just lets the man do as he pleases. Why not, right? If the man wants to help, then in Naruto's eyes; the man just wants to help.

Young and naive to a T.

Reviews, favourites and follows are very cool.


	4. The Fifth visits Sunagakure

**AN:** Welcome to the war on Sunagakure! I'm super grateful for the response to this story since posting the last chapter - a few reviews in particular made me driven. Thanks!

 **Chapter 3**

"Nothing in life is promised  
except death."

* * *

If Iruka noticed the blond hokage suddenly sitting in the back of the classroom, he didn't voice it, and merely acted to tidy up the end of his lecture on 'cool ninja'. It was a lesson he'd crafted particularly for these eight year old hopefuls, and he'd had fun with it.

"-at's right, Konohamaru," Iruka said, "now what do we know about our new hokage?"

Hands were raised all around the room, 'pick me!' was chanted aplenty and Iruka made a show of thinking about it before choosing a girl in the first row.

"He has a really big hat!"

Iruka snickered, "that wasn't in the lecture." He pointed at another random student.

"Hokage-sama is the shortest hokage-sama," a boy said.

"That's right," Iruka said, picking another student.

"His daddy was the fourth hokage, and his grandpa was the third hokage!"

Iruka laughed, "that's not quite right, the third hokage wasn't really his grandpa, he just acted like he was his grandpa." He pointed at another student.

"He protects us from demon foxes!"

"Uhh," Iruka paused, "somewhat, yes. That's a different lesson, we'll go over it tomorrow." Iruka motioned to another student.

"I heard he likes ramen," the boy whispered conspiratorially. "I think the ramen makes hokage-sama stronger. I'm going to eat ramen too, like Hokage-sama."

"Yes," Iruka said, "the hokage likes ramen - but ramen is unhealthy! Diet is important for a shinobi, remember that. Less ramen, more vegetables and more exercise, got it?" Half the class muttered quiet agreement, unenthusiastic. Iruka pointed to another student, "last one."

"Uhh," the girl stuttered, "Hokage-sama is very loud!" The rest of the class eagerly agreed with her assessment.

"Hokage-sama was loud during his speech because of the seals used on the podium," Iruka said, "you'll learn all about that next year... finally, what say you - Hokage-sama?"

The students paused in their mutterings and slowly, eager but fuelled with disbelief, turned in their seats to look towards the back of the room, where their teacher was staring.

"Well, I think the new hokage is pretty awesome, maybe a bit young, but that's just me," Naruto said, standing up and bowing to the students.

"You could have said _anything_ ," Iruka said blandly, "and you chose to self-promote."

"I'm the best hokage," Naruto nodded sagely.

"You're still doing it."

"I'm still the best."

"You're the _only_ hokage, so you're just as much the worst."

The kids finally realized what was going on, and their bickering kicked into overdrive.

"Woah, it's Hokage-sama!"

"He's so cool!"

"Iruka-sensei knows Hokage-sama?!"

"I want an autograph!"

"No, I want an autograph!"

"Boss?!"

For the next five minutes, Naruto soldiered through the attention of several dozen children. He was immensely relieved when the school bell rang, signifying the end of the school day, for it allowed him to breathe again.

"S-so, uh - how do you deal with that everyday?" Naruto asked, shivering and hugging himself ineffectually.

"I don't," Iruka said. "I'm not as interesting as you are, since I'm always here... Hokage-sama."

Naruto walked down the classroom, moved a chair from one of the front desks and sat down with a pleasant sigh. "How've you been, Iruka-sensei?"

"How've _I_ been? _You_ 're the one that's hokage all of a sudden, I should be asking you that question."

"Ahah, yeah, about that..." Naruto shrugged, scratching the back of his head. "It just kind of happened."

"I know."

"I would really rather be a genin still, y'know?"

"Yeah, I know."

"I just- oh," Naruto muttered. "You have new students now, huh?"

Iruka nodded. "Yeah, but they're hardly new, I've had them for almost six months. How is it?"

"Being hokage?"

Iruka shook his head. "Not just that, everything. I can see it, you need someone to talk to, spill."

"Oh jeez," Naruto said. "Where do I start?"

"From the beginning?" Iruka helpfully supplied. "Though, I'd _really_ like to hear why _you're sending us into a war_."

"U-uh, well..." Naruto shrunk. "It's their fault?"

"..."

* * *

The mass-funeral was a long, gruelling experience for all involved. The bodies had all been buried in a mass-community undertaking that spanned over the larger part of the day, and speakers had risen to the podium one-by-one as the darkness descended and the sunlight waned.

Naruto felt out of place, personally. He didn't want to make another speech and he doubted anyone thought this was a great time to ad-lib, so he wasn't asked past his initial refusal. He sat with most of team 7 and team 10, who had all (except when it came to Sasuke, who didn't really have friends) been their closest friends in their classes during the academy. None of them really talked, but they took comfort in one another as the day drew to a close.

Naruto had envisioned that he'd be more involved with the funeral somehow, but in the end it just didn't work that way. The third did receive particular attention during the procession, but that only meant an extra half hour of eulogies that even Naruto believed did the old man justice.

Even just a thousand was a lot of death - Naruto facepalmed at his use of 'just' - almost every single man and woman in the village, military or otherwise, had lost a family member - distant relation or not. A lot of tears had been shed during the burials, and they seemed to reign anew during the opening speech. The speeches primarily spoke of the courage, and the honor that those deceased had died with while protecting their homes, but they also spoke of the cowardice of the enemy and of spite - civilians made up a large portion of the casualties. In all, the speeches were a little bit convoluted, but it was rough times.

Very few had dry eyes, and Naruto was - uncomfortably - part of the few. He had completely panicked at the mere thought of the third's death, but he got over it. He was practically forced to get over it. In regards to the others, he was an orphan and he didn't have many friends, so he simply didn't know any of the other deceased in any meaningful way. That didn't mean he was unaffected by the mood, he just wasn't crying.

He was also terrible at consoling, and after his initial vain attempt to console Sakura - who had lost her father, and moved shortly after the speeches started to grieve with her mother - he'd given up. He could tell that everything was making Sasuke uncomfortable too, but that was less problematic.

Even as the speeches died down - the speakers were all volunteers, and there were many of them - most of the village remained unmoved. It was difficult to believe most of their military would be fully mobilized within twelve hours, but then again, they were ninja, and ninja were fast and could store tonnes of supplies in pieces of paper.

"Oi, Hokage-sama," came a familiar drawl, drawing attention from those close to the blond.

"Shikaku, huh? Is it that time already?"

* * *

It would be boring if it wasn't so important that he know what they were doing. Basically, his jounin commander was just taking the time to explain what he'd already decided to do... and Naruto was still wondering where the loveseats in his office were.

"But then," Naruto interrupted him, "if we're all doing the fighty-fights, then who's taking care of the daimyo?"

Shikaku hesitated, "define 'taking care'?"

"Killing, I guess."

"We can't really kill the daimyo, Hokage-sama." Shikaku chuckled dryly, "but if we replace his military he'll be forced to abdicate by right of our own daimyo... you don't want to know the amount of work I had to do to get _that_ organised on short notice."

Naruto nodded, "...and then we kill him?"

"No."

"Ah."

Shikaku took a sip of tea from his cup. "We _could_ kill him, but that risks the wrath of other daimyo, and that would rightfully bring more war onto our heads. It's cheaper to let them keep a small cut of the taxes and have the daimyo and his family live in their mansions as they squabble over their gossip."

"Okay... so, what was that about outposts?" Naruto asked, finally resigned to his boredom and lack of sleep.

"We have a single wood user in our Anbu," Shikaku answered, "he can fabricate large enough towers often enough that we can use them to send emergency signals between army groups, and we'll also use him in the forward group to produce well-defended camps as we move along."

"That... sounds like cheating."

"We use what we can."

"Can we use him for campfires too?"

"That's perhaps a bit too frivolous, his chakra is a commodity," Shikaku said. "Continuing, after the first group makes it to..."

The planning went on through the night, other shinobi made their way into and out of the office, and the best part of the entire evening - in Naruto's mind - was when his head finally hit the pillow.

* * *

The best part about being hokage was breakfast in bed.

The worst part about being hokage was that everything was going to be his fault if this somehow flipped on its head and all his ninja died.

It was morning, but not particularly early morning. They'd only been moving for two hours, but Naruto was all nerves. His security detail was no longer as hidden as it usually was, and he wasn't wearing the scarf he'd stolen off the third. The good news is that the back of the haori had finally been embroidered, and the bad news is that it was warm out. Go figure.

Naruto wasn't in the front of the procession, moving at a fast but not tiring pace, but he was close to the front and surrounded by his more important ninja like Shikaku. Speaking of, Jiraiya was leading it somewhere forward. Naruto hadn't had much chance to talk to the pervert, he visited the village shortly before the invasion, fought in it, and had been more or less grieving since.

There had been no altercations yet (as there shouldn't be), and moving at their current pace through the trees they'd be running through the land of rivers by tomorrow and along the sand-dunes by tomorrow evening. Glancing towards the red-headed cat-masked extra to his left, there were a lot of thoughts running through his mind, foremost the likelihood of Gaara's betrayal.

"You still with us, Gaara?" The redhead nodded, leaving Naruto to sigh, easily ignoring the looks his statement earned him.

It'd all be okay. Nobody would die, the sand would probably even surrender, and the Land of Fire would be twice as large within the week, with two hidden villages to boot. What could really go wrong?

Honestly, it was looking _pretty_ damn good for the leaf in the near future - and Naruto would be at the head of it all. Nice. Pressure, but nice.

* * *

"This isn't at all what it was hyped up to be..." Naruto said, staring across the boring old sand to the boring old canyon that Sunagakure resided within. Arms crossed and sitting atop a sand dune, he watched as his ninja prepared the perimeter. The lack of response from the sand was... underwhelming.

It'd been three days since they left Konoha. Eventually, after ground was made and what little pockets of resistance existed (spoiler; there were only two) were crushed, they moved on to surround the sand village.

There had been _one_ casualty - someone lost a finger while messing around with wind chakra. They wouldn't run into any food shortages for weeks, there wasn't a single damn ambush, and what prisoners they'd captured weren't making a peep. The effort was overwhelmingly successful and underwhelmingly uneventful.

Naruto wasn't exactly wishing for death to happen, but maybe he was, in a bit of a weird way? Kind of.

Gaara was becoming antsy, fidgeting as he followed him. That was a good reflection of the rest of his army, who were also waiting for something to happen.

Many eyes were suddenly drawn to the waving in the distance; of a white flag.

"Oh," Naruto said. "Can they do that? _I'm_ the one that declared war." Was it even possible to take the village like he wanted peacefully? Didn't seem right.

After speaking with his advisors, he left camp with Jiraiya, Shikaku and his guard detail (including Gaara) on his heels. Under the gazes of thousands of pairs of eyes, the small group stopped within a hundred feet of the entrance to the village's canyon, and waited while the sand's diplomats sauntered out in response.

It was rather tense, and Naruto was more frustrated than ever at the lack of ramen in the desert.

The contingent that moved to meet them was as small as their own, half a dozen people, and Naruto only recognized one or two members. He knew one of them was Gaara's female teammate during the chunin exams, and the other might have been his teacher. The group stopped within twenty feet and bowed pitifully. The girl mouthed something to Gaara that Naruto caught but couldn't translate, but ignored it when the redhead didn't do anything in response.

"Sunagakure sends it greetings," this was said by a portly man Naruto didn't know at all, but assumed was one of their diplomats.

"It's a bit late for greetings," Naruto muttered quietly, eyeing the redhead beside him carefully.

"What are your demands?"

The sand procession eyed Shikaku as he stepped forward to speak.

"We demand complete and total capitulation of your military structure and your own exodus from the country. Relocate, or we will not accept surrender," Shikaku said. Naruto was jealous with the charisma which the Nara could portray, but it was lessened significantly since the man spoke for him anyway. The sand would never accept, but it's all it would get from them - he thought it was rather fair considering their invasion and the subsequent death of the third.

The sand's spokesman immediately coughed, and choked on his words as he struggled to structure incoherent utterances.

"Wha-who do you-why are- _are you insan_ -" he was bonked on the head by a woman next to him, and he shut his mouth. The rest of the sand's procession seemed equally perturbed, however. This served to confuse Naruto, since what on earth would he ask for otherwise?

"Are you sure this is what you want?" a middle-aged woman asked, stepping forward. Decorated in ceremonial robes, she was likely a more achieved advisor or diplomat to the sand. "Can we not negotiate? The sand can offer reopened trade, military supplies, a mission stipend..." as she offered options and Shikaku cleanly rejected them, she grew more desperate. "The... the sand can _vassalize_ ," she offered distastefully. The diplomat seemed even more surprised by Shikaku's dismissal of that too, than she was over his initial demand.

"An exodus of your military or the war will continue."

With the thousands of shinobi behind the leaf's procession, a large man who'd grown infamous from the last great war by Shikaku's side and two jinchuuriki besides that man, the threat was as full and in-their-face as it could ever be.

The full refusal of diplomacy visibly shook the opposite procession, but not to the hopelessness that Shikaku preferred.

The woman stepped back into place, and the two in front of their procession - the woman and the man who initially spoke - bowed.

"We are sorry to have to do this, Hokage-san."

" _What-_ "

It all happened so fast. Jiraiya surged forwards even as the sand around the party exploded and sand shinobi emerged. Naruto's guard detail immediately formed a box around Naruto, Gaara and Shikaku, and shinobi surged through the opening in the canyon from the sand village proper even as the leaf's procession was assaulted. Naruto heard the yells of their own shinobi mobilizing, even as he reflexively activated the sealing array that gave him control over the kyuubi's chakra.

Despite his guards quickly entering the fray around him, Naruto found himself ducking a swipe that would have knocked his head clean off his shoulders and kicking back at the aggressor reflexively.

" _Gaara_?"

"You're pathetic," the redhead scoffed, sliding back from the force of the blond's kick. He held his now aching stomach gingerly and threw away the cat-mask. "And you're an utter imbecile for even considering that I would join you."

"Those are fighting words," Naruto growled, he pushed forward and tackled the redhead, which ended with him running headfirst into a wall of sand, bursting through haphazardly and sending the two tumbling. In doing so, Naruto had left the relative safety of his guard detail, but was able to chance a glance to his shinobi as they came surging down from their encampment.

"The sand is dead," Naruto said, "there's nothing they can do now. Come on Gaara, just join us or sit this one out. There's _nothing_ to gain by fighting me, I beat you once and I'll beat you twice."

Gaara shook his head with a dry smirk. "The sand is my domain, and it was _your_ mistake to bring me here."

Naruto paused. That was actually a good point. "What's the sand gonna do?" he said, "get in my eyes?" he wasn't very good at trash-talking, but Gaara really didn't care.

The redhead formed a ram seal, muttered something about sleep, and fell down.

"...uh?" Naruto said, pausing. Had he just... given up? Resolute and despite the desperate combat going on around the blond, he moved to poke him. Before he could get very close, however, the sand _moved._

All of it.

All of the sand.

All of the sand, as far as the eye could see, smack in the middle of a desert.

 _Shit_.

The shifting of the masses of sand emulated an explosive earthquake; everyone stumbled as the sand beneath their feet erupted, and those that were more proactive seized the opportunity to take advantage in the sandy haze it granted.

" _Fuck!_ " Naruto yelped as he was shoved to the side, barely avoiding being skewered by an abrupt sand construct. He could scarcely see through the sudden sandstorm, but it seemed like another body had taken his place. He gulped.

Seriously not the time to think about that.

Fuck. This was his fault, he was clearly gullible and naive. He foolishly believed Gaara was fucking stupid and insane enough to just go along with him willy-nilly and help against his own fucking village. Now, not only was _he_ paying for it, but _everyone_ was paying for it.

'Everyone except the sand,' Naruto thought distastefully, watching helplessly as another member of his guard detail was slaughtered in their effort to allow Shikaku escape. It was enough, but...

Only the superior reflexes granted to him by the Kyuubi's power allowed Naruto to anticipate and avoid the sharp and invisible blades of wind assaulting his position.

"This is fucked up!" he said. He couldn't see Gaara anymore, and with the sandstorm-

Naruto barely rolled under the huge sand arm seeking to grab hold of him. What the _hell_ was he supposed to-

Breathe.

"All I gotta do," Naruto muttered, "is punch it." However, ironically, it was difficult to see sand - and ergo find the ichibi - in a sandstorm... Naruto almost slipped as he backed away from another swipe. It was getting really hard to keep his footing when everything was one color.

He ducked under a third swipe, gritting his teeth. The fact he wasn't immediately caught was due entirely to his instinct. _There_.

Naruto surged forwards, shoulder leading the way, and collided with the massive solid form of the ichibi. The tanuki roared in surprise as it was flung back, but it managed to catch itself on its feet completely unharmed. If he focused, Naruto could see the ichibi only by the lines of blue decorating its form.

" _ **Kyuubi, how does it feel?**_ " the Ichibi roared; its voice was no longer as rash as it was previously. It was more calm, still loud, and grated on his nerves significantly more. " _ **How does it feel, knowing your end is so close?**_ "

It was fast - so, so much faster than last time - and Naruto had no chance of avoiding the colossal fist of the tanuki as it leapt forward like a bullet, somehow striking him in a fierce uppercut and sending him helplessly flying upwards. The young hokage was sent careening through the air so high he managed to glimpse the great collision of his forces against that of the sand; blood flew, skin burned and weapons clashed. His own blood flew from his open mouth, his lungs burned and he could feel his ribs bruising his flesh. Hopefully they hadn't punctured his lungs.

Above the sandstorm; his haori fluttered as he fell, a dozen sand-crafted javelins flew dead-on to his position, the massive tanuki's tail swept for his backside, and he could hear the whistling of the wind as invisible blades soared towards him.

He grimaced, it was a terrible situation to find himself in.

Even as the blades of wind cut holes through his cloak and cast bloody gashes along his limbs, his golden aura exploded outwards; and he moved. He twisted with superhuman agility, avoided the point of the initial sand javelin, kicked once to change its trajectory and again to send it soaring towards the tanuki's tail. The second skimmed his leg and the third scraped the side of his head even as he twisted his neck.

The javelin he threw was initially harmless, but it arrested the momentum of the tanuki's great tail just enough that Naruto comfortably took the slam. He held on, tenuously made his feet grip onto it, and ran along its length with speed he was scarcely used to. Within moments he was within the beast's reach, and it threw a punch downwards with overwhelming force that the blond only barely avoided by leaping forward. The force behind the blow send the tail careening harshly to the sandy grounds, creating an awkward situation in which Naruto had nowhere to land.

The ichibi reflexively reached forward to grasp the blond.

 _Snake. Ram. Monkey._

If he destroyed the limb, it would be impossible for the ichibi to grip him with it.

 _Boar. Horse. Tiger._

The biju was quick, but not quick enough to grab him before its arm was instead enveloped in an intense bout of flames extreme enough to convert the limb into molten glass, effectively removing it from the ichibi's control and creating a steaming pit in the shifting sands. If the biju could feel pain, it would have doubtlessly been quite enraged.

Naruto landed beside its tail, but was unable to move before sand rose and curled around him in a cocoon.

He struggled to escape, but the beast laughed at his efforts as it moved the blond to its face. " _ **Hello, Kyuubi.**_ " The ichibi's sheer height meant Naruto was still high enough to see the fighting below - or at least the waves of fire and blood. The air was invisible and water was scarce in the desert.

"Hey."

It tilted its colossal head and opened its maw. " _ **Enjoy your last-**_ "

Naruto watched, as if in slow motion, as a hulking ball of blue chakra emerged from beneath. In the sandstorm below, it flew - attached to a man he'd never considered as anything more than a pervert - for the head of the tanuki. The biju followed his glance, it saw the attack, but too little too late. It squeezed, _hard_ , and Naruto felt several ribs pop and snap, even as he watched with a bated, choking breath as the absurd collection of chakra collided with and _completely_ devastated the head and most of the torso of the ichibi, cutting off its sentence and crushing his control.

As the old man fell and Naruto was released from the grip of the sand, the roar of the sandstorm slowly died down and Jiraiya yelled.

" _BRAT!_ YOU _HAVE TO GET RID OF THE KID, I'M REALLY FUCKING BUSY DOWN HERE!_ "

Naruto didn't bother responding, for the sandstorm suddenly surged anew and his voice would never carry.

" _ **YOU HAVE NO CONTROL HERE, KYUUBI!**_ "

The voice was disembodied - Naruto didn't even know where it actually came from - but Gaara himself was visible. Jiraiya's gift - _besides saving his life, apparently_ \- destroyed the redhead's casing.

He had to kill him. There was no other way, the sand was being rallied and quickly recovering the ichibi's form and he only had this one chance.

He had a pouch, this was war. He had weapons. Weapons for killing. Naruto gulped, but pushed forward as he ran a hand into the equipment pouch strapped to his waist, and pulled out a kunai. Kunai had taken thousands of lives, this was just one more.

Naruto was only adding to the killcount.

The ichibi tried to stop him, but the sand was temporarily weakened and Naruto, even spitting blood and keeping an arm wrapped weakly around his stomach had no problem dancing around its sluggish strikes. Gaara himself offered no resistance and Naruto gripped him by the hair and sliced right through the boy's neck.

Blood. It spurted out of the wound like a tap and Naruto threw the kunai away with disgust, wiped his hands off on his legs - navy was a brilliant color for this purpose - and leapt off from the crippled and dripping remains of the sand tanuki. It was quite a fall, but the sand was reasonably soft, and with the crunch of his falling sandals against the sand, he finally noticed the lull in the fighting.

The sandstorm had dissipated with the disappearance of the ichibi.

The combatants had backed away at the sight of the corpse of the son of their past kazekage, at the bloodied kunai by his feet and at the bloodied and injured hokage; limping, aura diminished, with a trail of blood dripping down his chin and wearing a white, blood-stained and sliced to pieces haori. The 'corpse' of the ichibi collapsed into the sand and the sand themselves dispersed back into their village. Between their losses during the invasion, the death of their kage, the hundreds of corpses currently staining the sand red from either side, the death of their jinchuuriki and the failure of their biju, they retreated, broken and inevitably defeated. The initial team they'd sent out to talk with them, sans two members, remained dead on the sand.

The other two stood against them, heads down, kneeling.

They'd given up.

The war which lasted only three days contained a single major battle and brought the death of the defender's jinchuuriki.

The leaf suffered minimal casualties. What's a hundred men, when you've just conquered thousands?

Med-nin rushed to their hokage's side, which he welcomed with a smile - despite being unconscious.

And the sands stirred.

* * *

 **AN** **:**

Starting next chapter, the story ramps up in seriousness. Be ready.


	5. The Fall of the Fifth

**AN:** Happy New Year!

There's not much room for jokes, (and a review expressed concern) so the genre was changed. Sorry for the delay!

 **Chapter 4**

"Reason, I sacrifice you to  
the evening breeze."

* * *

 _Drip_.

It didn't take much to figure out where he was.

 _Drip_ , _drip._

It wasn't the first time Naruto had been in the sewer that was his mindscape, and it probably wouldn't be the last.

Huge, thick and rusted metal bars hung before him. They stretched from the floor all the way to an unseeing but inevitable ceiling. It would be too dark to see anything at all if it weren't for the mass of scintillating orange sentience on the other side of the cage. As the only source of light, his eyes were instinctively drawn to the sleeping beast as soon as they'd opened.

"Kyuubi… what's your stupid orange ass want now?" Naruto asked, somewhat peeved. The seal made for a dreary place, and just being present swiftly gave him a migraine. According to Jiraiya, it had something to do with the intensity of the sealing array, but he couldn't confess to understanding or even remembering the details. If he had to describe it, it would be like a thin screen of static existed behind his eyes and between each and every thought. It was easy to let it aggravate him.

Growing up, the fox had been terrifying. The sheer size of it, the emotions the mere presence of the biju's chakra provoked… those disgustingly fierce and intelligent red eyes. It used to seriously raise his shackles, and he'd absolutely despised it. Even now, years later, after pushing past the nuances of the beast's power and having trained in its use, being in this mindscape made him uncomfortable and the migraine would never help matters.

He crossed his arms and waited as the fox, several hundred times his size, stretched. It was never quite ready to receive him, but yet, it was usually what called him here. He didn't have a choice in the matter, and the few times he visited for his own reasons he hadn't bothered waking it up.

The beast yawned, and Naruto strained to leave his ears uncovered. It was a ghastly sound, one that his instincts yelled at him to flee from, but showcasing weakness to the fox always ended in humiliation. It was just a yawn, and the fox couldn't hurt him. _Relax_. It was literally more harmless than his pillowcases.

Finally, the fox sat on its haunches and focused its vivid red gaze down to the blond. He gulped inaudibly, and the orange mass grinned.

" **You are a** **fool.** " The voice came snarled, harsh and loud; fitting for a bellow from a great beast. Its voice fit the fox well, and while it seemed like it would be terrifying – with hearing it, came an odd sense of fulfillment. It just sounded exactly like you'd think it would, and that was oddly satisfying.

Naruto rolled his eyes. "Uh-huh." The fox was rarely forthcoming, but he had practice with it by now.

" **You have no idea what you've done, do you?** "

He exhaled. "Are you referring to the war?" Being general was typically the easiest way to draw out an answer. The fox couldn't necessarily keep him here – and he was kind of sleeping anyway – but it _would_ call him back if it wasn't satisfied with teasing him. Was it right to call it teasing? Probably not, but it wasn't wrong either.

" **No. Your human death parties don't concern me in the slightest.** "

"Death parties?" Naruto muttered. It was apt in its own way. "I don't know what you want then." The last couple days were nothing but traveling, and nothing interesting – especially to the fox – would've happened. The day before that was his inauguration. The day before that was the invasion, where he fought summons, and… the Ichibi.

Right, he'd killed it just now, hadn't he? His memory regarding it was a bit foggy because his mind was recuperating – most of his body was sleeping. It was a common side-effect of delving into his seal, but it thankfully didn't extend inversely.

"Then you called me here because I killed the Ichibi?"

If he didn't know better, he'd think the fox laughed.

It cocked its head. " **Do you truly believe you killed a tailed beast?** " Naruto frowned but gave pause to merely dismissing the words. He knew that if he died, the Kyuubi would die too – it was a spectacularly prominent facet of his seal. It was likely why the fox had put up as little fuss as he did with him taking its power. That was not to say that it eagerly gave it up, and it did in fact fight vehemently, but if the fox absolutely tried its hardest to refrain from giving him power then he'd have a mere fraction of what he did have available.

Then, given the fox's words – which he had to give a sprinkling of salt – was Gaara's seal not designed with the same intentions? It wasn't something he'd considered in the moment, and judging by Jiraiya's actions he hadn't either, and the man was a seal master. Had he killed another jinchuuriki for _nothing_?

Coming to terms with the possibility, Naruto visibly paled. "What are you saying?"

The fox lowered its awfully human-esque forelegs and rest its head on them, for the sole benefit of being closer to eye-level with its container.

" **I would enjoy the death you've brought upon yourself, but you're taking me with you. That is unacceptable.** " The red eyes narrowed against his blue, and the blond gave pause.

He wanted to rebuke but hesitated to respond. The tone was resolute and as serious as he had ever heard it from the fox, whose voice would usually hold a snarky or sarcastic undertone that simply wasn't present.

If the fox were to be believed, and the Ichibi was still alive… that was a full-blown biju, a being that, without a container, held unlimited power. The biju of old, before they were sealed, were likened to that of a natural disaster capable of leveling cities in moments. The fourth hokage's battle against the Kyuubi twelve years prior was the greatest victory humanity had against the beasts since the times of the first hokage, and before that – the great battle that brought an end to the ten-tails era and created the moon.

A common consensus drawn was that the biju had killed more men, woman, and children than all of the wars between clans combined.

The power Gaara's facsimile of the Ichibi used against him in their battle was just that – the power of a copy. The true Ichibi would be something Naruto could _never_ scratch, unless he were to someday ascend to godhood with the likes of the rikudou sennin or the first hokage. Sealing was the only way, but nobody was prepared for that. There were always signs when a biju were approaching – they were colossal in size and their presence was impossible to miss. It was possible to momentarily overcome them with well-prepared fuinjutsu, but there were no other methods. There was a reason the fourth hokage's victory against the suddenly appearing Kyuubi was the stuff of legends. It was _the_ reason many considered him to be the most powerful kage of his time.

"What do you want from me?" he had a vague idea of what it wanted, but he shivered at even the thought of offering it.

The fox's ear twitched. " **Can you feel that, or are your senses too dull?** "

"I-I can't sense the outside while I'm in-"

" **Self-imposed ignorance,** " the Kyuubi muttered, " **it does not matter.** " The fox rose to its full height and Naruto was once again struck by the majesty of its size. " **We may die here. Your healers will certainly die here.** "

"What?! What do you _-_ "

" **Our chances of survival are slim. It is dependent on the whims of circumstance and human mentality, which I am disinclined to place my faith in. I hope you are aware I've resented you every step of the way, child.** "

Naruto sighed and shook his head. He was more concerned for his death than he was about the fox's pettiness.

"What's happeni-"

He was abruptly thrown out of the mindscape with such force that he thought, for a moment, that he was dead.

* * *

"The Ichibi… _fuck!_ " Jiraiya growled, rushing to the field hospital behind their front line.

They had been drawing a new treatise with the sand – it was truly a pretence for the sand's total dissolution into the leaf, but it required drawing up nonetheless – when the unwelcome waves of corrupted chakra began weaving through everyone present. Each individual could feel it grasp onto their own chakra and nobody was comfortable with the slimy sensation, or the very slight draw on their chakra that was nothing if not a bad omen.

The shivering of the desert left no doubt in anyone's mind as to the cause.

Hence, Jiraiya swiftly left Shikaku's side. While it would be seen as him seeking to add to the hokage's protection, he would have done it even if the boy was still a genin – like he should be.

The man knew exactly who the Ichibi would target first, and he had to do his damndest to protect his godson. That's what he had signed up for when he agreed to be the brat's godfather.

The blond was practically his legacy and represented over a decade of his work on sealing. Working on the death god's seal pushed him far above the echelons of other sealing master's, and Jiraiya himself had invented many new sealing arrays just as an aside.

One such seal was a large proximity ward around the encampment that prevented the use of shunshin, and such was why he was running as opposed to being there already. He regretted its placement.

In the distance, but large enough that it may as well have been beside him, the shattered remains of the facsimile of the Ichibi stirred. With each step Jiraiya took, the sand beneath his sandals seemed to growl and shimmer. Strong storms began their reign around the expanse of desert, whipping sand through the air and tearing down their carefully constructed encampment, and Jiraiya's heart clouded with a thick swamp of emotions.

He spared a glance to the sand behemoth, only to regret his moment wasted. Already, it was a dozen times larger than it had been under the jinchuuriki's control. The Ichibi swung its arm in what might have been curiousity, and the entire wall this side of Suna – natural or otherwise – collapsed, broken and swallowed by the shifting sands.

Thousands of lives must have been lost.

The tailed beast turned its head, and for just a moment, Jiraiya could have sworn that it matched its eyes with his own. A smirk, if it may even be called that on such a monster, burst onto its face and he paled. Less than a step later, and Jiraiya burst into the tent of the temporary hospital.

He quickly swept the large open room with his gaze and found himself regretting that everyone here would probably die. He couldn't see it, but even those barely conscious would sense the unholy concentration of chakra outside. The Ichibi was assuredly preparing a bijudama with the ultimate goal of annihilating the Kyuubi, and Jiraiya rushed to Naruto's side, mind racing, even as his body screamed at him to flee.

There could be no escape from the personification of the desert, not while they were all stuck in the middle of it. A jinchuuriki was something they could deal with, and bringing the sand tanuki's container wasn't something Jiraiya made a fuss over. It was a decision made in an ignorance that could have been overcome if he'd just looked at its seal.

Instinctively, he knew he had only seconds. At least, his godson looked to be recovered from his fight with the previous incarnation of the Ichibi. Jiraiya had to refrain from summoning a toad as a meat shield, or to transport them to Mount Myōboku. There wasn't even close to enough time for the latter, and he knew enough that any toad foolhardy enough to help with the former would just be one more to the death count.

Ancient sites of battle against the biju showed that their bijudama could create craters the size of Sunagakure itself. It was said that the higher a biju's tail, the more powerful they are – but with even half that distance there was just no way he could get away from that without shunshin. If only he had learned the hiraishin…

There was only one thing he could do really, something anyone could do - and if it didn't work, well, it was better than living and knowing he did nothing. Ignoring the slight protests of the hokage's medical officer, Jiraiya swept the blond into his arms and dived to the ground.

If anyone could survive the full brunt of a tailed beast's most destructive power, then it was Naruto; an Uzumaki with the gift of the Kyuubi's innate healing and his father's hardy constitution. Even so, Jiraiya hardened his hair, and struck with an epiphany, quickly removed his summons' contract and held it between the two.

He was vaguely aware of others diving to the ground around him – and at least two that moved to cover _him_ – when in an instant everything unravelled.

* * *

"Ugh…"

His gaze was horrendously blurry, but where he had expected perhaps a doctor or even just the roof of a tent – he only saw red.

Naruto shivered. His sense of touch was okay. His hands grasped something familiar enough, it felt like an inordinately large scroll, and he could feel quite the weight on top of him.

He realized his eyes had been stuck shut, and he pushed forward to give himself space – or he tried to. He couldn't move his right arm. _Don't panic._ He quickly used his left to wipe his eyes, though he had to push something light out of the way and ignored what he knew to be on his hands as he was finally able to see what was holding him down.

He promptly turned his head and threw up, and he noticed immediately that much more blood than food left his stomach.

Panicking, the blond pushed the weights aside and kicked out from beneath them. He finally realized a horrific pain in his legs, and released a squeal of pain. But, he was free to look around.

He was in the middle of a crater, surrounded by illegible bodies.

 _Jiraiya is dead_.

His only family apparently died while he was wasting time talking with the Kyuubi. He couldn't even begin to identify any of the other corpses, but the white mane of hair, and the unique hitai-ate the man wore proved enough.

He couldn't see anyone, but that had to be because he was below ground level. It _had_ to be. Even so, he could spy the ridiculously large form of the Ichibi over the precipice of the destruction. It wasn't looking in his direction, but if he had to guess, it was probably about to destroy Sunagakure.

"I…" Naruto shivered and spat out a thick and disgusting glob of blood and saliva. "I did this."

The fox knew what was going to happen, and he supposed it warned him in its own way.

He could hardly move, nor did he even want to, so he didn't lift even token resistance to the Kyuubi's effort to pull him back into the mindscape.

* * *

The blond was no longer in the mood to waste time with the fox and was even less enthused to muster thoughts against an ever-ailing migraine.

"What do you want now?" he snarled, crossing his arms shakily. In here, he didn't suffer from the wounds he carried in the physical world. He exchanged pure physical pain for a migraine and some mental anguish. It admittedly could be worse.

It was the first time the fox had ever been awake and ready to receive him, sitting on its haunches.

" **You're dying.** "

Naruto blinked dumbly. "Eh?"

The thought of death hadn't even crossed his mind. He had always been invulnerable, right? He was burdened with Kyuubi and the greatest seal on earth – his healing factor, only hastened by his heritage, was world-class. He _couldn't_ die, it simply wasn't something he considered in his day-to-day meanderings.

Sure, a sword through the neck or a knife to the lungs – any conventional method, really – could kill him like any other, but something as passive as whatever the Kyuubi was suggesting was a ludicrous thought.

"T-there's a lot of blood, yeah, but-" _he could restore blood!_

" **Chakra poisoning.** "

" _That_ can hurt me?!" He had thought that the mere presence of the Kyuubi's chakra had strengthened his coils against the corrosive effects of any of the ancient chakra of biju.

"… **It is not in the conventional sense. The Ichibi is released. Without a filter, his chakra pervades even through your coils. Blood loss will be the cause of death, but his chakra is your inhibitor to healing.** "

The young hokage collapsed to his knees and punched the murky concrete beneath him in earnest frustration. "That's the end of the road for us then, huh? Some fucking low-rate biju?"

He was numbed by the thought of it, but he wasn't sure there was much reason to continuing _anyway_. The old man was dead less than a week ago – it was still a fresh wound that he had not dealt with – and now, his godfather died protecting him… _senselessly._ It was a pointless sacrifice because he was dying anyway.

He frowned. But…

* * *

" _-it's your job to nurture and protect them-"  
_

* * *

There are still others that cared about him. He couldn't just _abandon_ them like that, there had to be something he could do. _Something_. It was his job.

" **Release me.** "

"What?" If possible, Naruto frown grew even more pronounced. "I'm not dying for _nothing_. If I take you down with me," he crossed his arms, resolute, "then I was at least worth something to the world."

That's right. With his death, one of the nine terrors of the world would be gone forever. If only he hadn't released one in the process and gotten the only family he had left killed.

The fox released what might've been a sigh, had it not almost collapsed Naruto's metaphysical ear-drums. It shook its great head and leaned down, toward the blond but still towering over him, and gave Naruto the most profound look he had ever borne witness to.

" **For my life, I will be your people's salvation.** "

He gulped. The demon's proposition warranted no explanation, but was it truly an option? He had wound his hands so tightly around themselves that had this been real, his nails would have carved apart his palms. It was his last chance of life he was considering throwing away. It was still possible, if slightly, that someone could heal him. He could theoretically survive, though the odds were slim.

…and then what? He would just die anyway. The blond rubbed a clutched hand over the small representation of the seal on his stomach through his shirt. The only idea he could even conceive of would be to store the Ichibi within himself – but that was impossible unless he could survive the extraction of the Kyuubi. That was especially impossible because the Kyuubi was doubtlessly the only thing preventing him from falling dead on the spot, even if he couldn't be healed.

No matter how he stacked the odds in his favour, he was going to die. Whether or not that death meant something…

He stood, and glared into the eyes of the fox with everything he could muster.

" _You_ will _stop the Ichibi._ "

The great head, many times his size, nodded its confirmation without duress.

" _You_ will not _bring harm to the leaf._ "

The fox seemed pleased. " **In return, you grant me my life and freedom.** "

"And to this end…" the blond muttered, shaking his head as he stepped towards the seal, "…I guess I'm dead, huh?"

Naruto ripped the flimsy piece of paper from the Kyuubi's cage.

* * *

Shikaku tensed as the massive conglomeration of chakra zipped towards the encampment in the distance, and even he felt his shoulders drop unconsciously as the chakra detonated outward.

The only saving grace is that most of their shinobi remained unscathed, but he knew where the tailed beast had aimed and he felt even now the hopelessness of the situation churning deep within his gut. With another dead hokage, and without their seal master, there was significantly less they could do to a fully-formed and unsealed biju.

At someone's insistence, he dispatched a pair of ANBU to the targeted locale. Small twisters of sand lay to the wayside, but they weren't particularly dangerous or bothersome.

"Have the Nara ready to intercept," he ordered. "Baki," he turned to the turban-wearing sand council member. The man was the closest the sand had to a kage at the moment, and Shikaku supposed he amounted to the same. While he would like to be hesitant with any dealings with the sand with their understandably tense relationship, they didn't have the opportunity for anything but co-operation, and he knew Baki understood that. "Where is your seal master?"

The man turned to what remained of the village wall, and Shikaku spied in the distance a pair of elderly making their way to them within a small guard force.

"Chiyo is the one that sealed the Ichibi into Gaara, but it was a contained sealing between vessels."

In other words, she may not have the skill or power to seal the Ichibi as it is.

The Nara sighed, rubbing his forehead into his palm. They didn't even have a suitable vessel. It was a godsend that it was a biju of the Ichibi's level of chakra, which could be sealed more freely than the Kyuubi, but it was then a terrible situation strategically to be fighting it in the desert.

He watched dispassionately as it turned its maw to face their main forces, with what could only be a greatly satisfied smile.

" **Puny little humans! Are you** _ **proud**_ **? How do you feel, that it was your** _ **vaunted**_ **hokage that released me?** " Its words alone were mundane, but the tone and power behind them threw minds into disarray. Biju are not feared solely for their power, but as well due to the sliver of the previous primordial deity's conscience behind them. Had they been mindless beasts, they could be tricked.

As it was, Shikaku doubted the entire Yamanaka clan's ability to hold its mind hostage, but they had to make do with a small portion of them and hope for the best. All they could hope to do against a biju is contain it until it is sealed. Any physical damage inflicted is superficial and ultimately meaningless.

When it moved to attack, the Nara among the warband would engage. Simultaneously, the Yamanaka they had with them would try to possess the beast. Again, as it was a primordial consciousness, they had little but enough chance of doing anything sustainable. Then, others would attack with any elemental skills they are proficient in. The damage would be superficial, but as long as the possibility existed, however remote, that it may be enough to distract the tanuki at the most crucial moment, then it was worth doing.

While the Ichibi seemed ready to engage in one moment, it frowned and looked away from them the next.

…and then, the hair on the back of his neck stood on end.

Another dangerous burst of chakra had been released to the world. It had everyone clutching their fists and weapons tersely. While they had been willing to fight the Ichibi, whatever was coming invoked memories of a time that all of Konoha would rather forget.

Even the Ichibi seemed aghast.

"… **the _child_ survived?**"

Shikaku gasped. The seal of the Shinigami was omnipotent, and he _knew_ it was designed with killing the fox when the container died as a vital feature. It was Minato's final gift to the world; because of the man's sacrifice, the beast would never be released to the world again. It would die, having lived its final days within his son.

But this was assuredly the chakra of the Kyuubi, the monster that ended the lives of thousands of Konoha's citizens and invoked dreaded memories none would care to recall in the rest.

He didn't understand. "Naruto released the Kyuubi," he said, even if he didn't believe the words himself. _That_ blond kid? The one that began all of this because the man he considered a grandfather had died? His methods were questionable, but he seemed to have had morals.

He may still be alive, then. Shikaku had written him off as dead because he had thought surviving the bijudama – especially when the kid was injured – was impossible. That he had then been able to unseal the Kyuubi, the fact he even wanted to at all, was unfathomable.

The situation only grew worse as a steaming pillar of corrosive red chakra rose from the blast site, searing into the heavens and dying the sky a hot pink.

Shikaku fell to his knees and was vaguely aware of others doing so in his peripherals.

This was the end for them all. The massive levels of chakra permeating the sky drew down and coalesced around the blazing pillar. The sky remained dyed, but the Kyuubi found shape and form.

It even dwarfed the figure of the Ichibi, like that of a parent to a toddler.

Nine tails grew from its backside, and with a testing wave of one, the desert behind the demon erupted into a great blaze that soared to the heights of the clouds.

" _ **It's about time**_."

* * *

 **AN** : I was originally going to conclude the arc this chapter, but I don't think I realized just how long it was going to be. I'm sorry for the delay, but it's given me time to think this one through – so I hope you're pleased.

I actually feel bad about Jiraiya. He's one of my favourite characters in the series, but it fit the situation _and_ his character so well that he had to go. There will be a time when this is expanded on.

 **Edit** **(5/02/19)** : Revised a fair bit of wording.


	6. The Abrupt Hokage

Fix.

 **Chapter 5**  
 **"The Abrupt Hokage"**

"What would life be worth if there were no death?"

A review pointed out this chapter is highly dissonant - and it is - with the previous chapters, but that's just how this chapter has to be. The previous tone will return following future chapters.

 **Edit:** The above may be somewhat disregarded. Said previous chapters have been rewritten. Enjoy!

* * *

The next time he opened his eyes, there was no pain at all.

No headache, no migraine. While something felt off, not even his legs hurt, his clothing was unmarked and his skin unblemished.

It seemed cold, and away a short distance the blond could see both a campfire and vaguely a man seated beside it. Nothing else, and there was a distinct lack of light in any other direction. With a purpose, to figure out where he was, he strode forward. Eerily, the sound of his footsteps echoing off the smooth floor – white, if the light in the distance was to be trusted – was the only thing he could hear besides the slight crackles of the flames.

The man stood as he approached, and the boy noted he seemed familiar, but couldn't quite place the resemblance. In fact, he couldn't remember much of anything.

What was he doing, again? The boy paused, looked down and noticed the shifting of the fancy white cloak draped around his shoulders. It was evidently well-made and of a good material, but despite its familiarity, he couldn't remember its purpose, or where it came from. He frowned, and searing with an increasing amount of questions, pushed into the square of benches surrounding the campfire.

"Who are you?" he asked, seating himself opposite of the fire and rubbing his arms. Warmth seeped into his body and he realized only then how truly cold he had been, as if the fire was the only source of heat in existence. That seemed wrong, but he couldn't say why.

The man opposite him frowned and sat back down, crossing his arms. In a word, he seemed disappointed.

"You're already passing on, huh?" It was said quietly enough that it would be remiss for the boy to assume it was meant for him, but he would respond nonetheless.

Testing his tongue, noting an increasingly common sense of familiarity, he spoke. "What do you mean, passing on?"

The man tilted his head, and the boy had the thought that something in the man's eyes suggested he was no longer interested in speaking.

"Your soul is being prepared for recycling," the man said blandly. "I had thought… well, nevermind." Sourly, the man stood and turned to leave.

The boy immediately leapt to attention. "No, wait!"

The man paused and gave the boy a searching look. "What do you want?" A gleam of curiosity – how the boy knew it, he didn't know – appeared in the man's gaze.

The boy gulped. What _did_ he want? He knew, somehow, that he didn't want the man to leave. He didn't know why.

"I-I don't want you to leave." He sounded conflicted even to himself, and it rubbed him the wrong way.

Slowly, the man backed up to his seat and slouched back down, the boy appreciatively doing the same. The man then remained silent, so it fell to the boy to speak again.

"Who are you?" he asked, repeating his initial question.

The man bowed his head slightly, measuring the boy against something unknown to him.

"I am Minato Namikaze," the man frowned at the lack of immediate response, "I'm a spirit vassal."

The name tickled something in the boy's gut, but he now had something to go off.

"Why are you here?"

Minato leaned forward, placed his forearms on his knees and looked longingly into the boy's eyes. "Personal reasons."

"Oh."

"What do you remember?"

The boy blinked. It was the second question the man had asked him, but it seemed much more loaded.

Then, what did he remember? He frowned in concentration, and as the moment waned and the stranger's curiosity began to ebb, something came to him.

When he tried really hard, he could remember one thing – a specific thing that must have spent more time in his thoughts than any other.

The boy looked up victoriously.

"Ramen."

The man fell off his perch and hit his head on the ground, made an odd squeak that sounded vaguely like swearing, and returned to his spot the next moment.

* * *

He coughed into his hand and looked at the kid oddly. "You remember _ramen_?"

"Yes!"

"The noodles, ramen?" he reiterated.

"Uh-huh."

The most bizarre part of it all to Minato was easily the proudness the boy displayed at remembering his – probably – favourite food. But then, that just made the circumstances more inordinary.

"It's… irregular for a soul passing to retain any memory," he said. It would then make sense to think that the boy was suffering a temporary death, but there was too much damage for that and too much time had passed. He was dead, plain and simple, but something kept him bound to earth and it was assuredly not ramen. Minato himself was bound to the Shinigami, for example.

Perhaps, when one soul is intrinsically linked to another, especially a soul of an immortal being…

The boy tilted his head at the man's remark and patiently waited for the inferred explanation. What was there to tell him, however? The kid wasn't going to return, it was practically impossible to revive and recover the soul of a person. But was he really going to leave his son as a broken, ignorant ghost? Minato had observed him over the years, every now and again – more as a hobby than anything – as the kid was his legacy. There was little he couldn't take the time to explain to him, and they had much time, but-

"H-huh?"

The blond flashed a pale blue and Minato immediately had his mind made for him. He was not in condition to be revived, however it may be about to be done.

He closed his eyes, contacted his master and within the moment he received assistance, none too soon. The perks of the job, so they say.

"Alright. Listen to me now and listen to me well, Naruto."

The boy shivered, the light disappeared, and he nodded. He had no problem taking to the name.

"We are in limbo, an alternative reality between death and rebirth. We're in a time accelerated space, because your friends are trying to bring you back to life and you're not ready for that."

Apparently devoid of his experience, Naruto had not the personality to do anything but meekly nod. It was Minato's hope that some semblance of memory would be returned on revival, but he'd have to prepare the kid for the worst-case-scenario.

* * *

Despite the terrifying nature of the kyuubi's emergence to the world, little damage was done to the village thereafter, or even to the shinobi nearby.

In fact, while they were lacking an explanation, the retreating forces of shinobi seemed to be receiving _aid_ from the fox. There was no other way to fathom the kyuubi's actions, as the fox immediately moved to push the other biju away from the village with the expulsion of vast swathes of horrifyingly powerful chakra and engaged it in the distance.

While they understood what it was doing, they didn't understand why – as such, retreat remained the only reasonable action, and in a dramatic twist of events the Leaf shinobi were assisting in the swift extraction of the citizens of the Sand.

Even then…

"One must be sealed," Baku mused, watching the distant beasts collide. The small group including himself and Shikaku sat on a high dune located on the opposite end of the village, shinobi and civilians alike running amok beneath them. The visage of the kyuubi was so large and its power so palpable that it was doubtless any and all within Suna lay eyes to its swishing tails at least once in the last minute. Not one shinobi was excited about their prospects of surviving this disaster. It was a testament to the strength of the tanuki's specialty that it wasn't simply swept aside by its much more powerful sibling.

Shikaku nodded solemnly, casting a glance to the corpse of the hokage beside him, nude and seal expanded. Swiftly following recovery of the body – alongside that of the toad summons – they set the sand's seal master, Chiyo, to studying his seal. If anything could be gleaned from Jiraiya's work, it was something that would immediately be useful.

It was simple to determine the blond's cause of death, his legs mangled and so saturated with the ichibi's chakra that even with prompt and skilled aid he would have died quickly of blood loss without an unreasonable amount of blood transfusions. Thankfully, the seal wasn't meaningfully damaged – it must have been in its shrunken form when he was attacked.

The three and those around them; entailing several other important figures and administrators organising the retreat, stumbled as the earth shook and the sand threw the group blind for just a moment.

Biju fighting amongst themselves was the very definition of natural disaster and judging by the destruction the two evidently had the ease of creating, the Land of Wind would only be the first casualty if their battle wasn't stopped. It was expected of them to put a stop to it, because if not the shinobi within the Land of Wind – who would? Certainly not the rest of the countries' population, who would all be dead within a matter of days.

Even if the kyuubi intended to help them – which was only a hopeful guess at best – that left the ichibi.

The old woman seated beside the standing Nara drew his gaze as she clenched her fists and shook her head. He gave her the questioning raise of an eyebrow.

"The seal is a masterpiece," she said shortly, her tone distasteful. "But I can't replicate it," Chiyo snorted, "and nobody else can, unless they're capable of summoning the Shinigami."

It was expected, but it still left a sour taste in his mouth. "The last man to know the jutsu died moments ago, and the two before him died using it," Shikaku said, eliminating the option and crossing his arms. He ignored the gleam that entered the elderly woman's eyes. There wasn't a lot they could do. While the kyuubi's apparent helpfulness was an extremely welcome surprise, its existence here clearly created a problem much bigger than the ichibi on its own. The solution remained the same, however; to seal the tanuki. If they had to seal the fox afterwards, so be it, but that was an issue for later.

Jiraiya would have had trouble, but doubtlessly would have had the skill to do something. Unfortunately, just to add a heaping of salt to the entire clusterfuck of a situation, he was found quite dead. Next best was Chiyo, but she herself admitted to a lack of capability. It wasn't like they were the only specialists either village had, but they were the only ones skilled enough for a matter like this. Or, Shikaku corrected, Jiraiya was the only one with such skill. That man's death was now worse for them than the hokage's was.

" _Chiyo_ ," Baki called meaningfully, turned to gaze into the elderly woman's eyes. "It might be the only option." He said it with an edge of softness the Nara was unaccustomed to from the man.

The woman's face squashed in derision but said nothing as Shikaku drifted between the two.

"Option?"

The two's eyes briefly met, and Chiyo turned away with a huff of disgust.

Baki gave a slight smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "Chiyo is the creator of a potential reincarnation technique."

While it seemed at its surface like great news, Chiyo's reaction and Shikaku's own experience with reincarnation techniques left him unimpressed.

"If it's anything like Impure World Reincarnation…"

Chiyo herself shook her head. "I invented it for my puppets," she murmured, "and it's a very powerful healing technique, because it draws directly from the user's soul."

Perhaps she wasn't the greatest fuinjutsu expert but creating such a mythical jutsu placed Shikaku's opinion of her significantly higher.

Given the universal rule of give and take governing jutsu, Shikaku inferred that reviving a person would probably kill her, and even then – was it better to revive the seal bearer, or the seal master? Was that a treasonous question? No, he decided, because the hokage was already dead. But of course, when the seal bearer already represented the epitome of the seal master's work – and given what Jiraiya himself would probably say about the choice – it would then make more sense to revive the hokage. It helped that the boy was an Uzumaki, which are specifically good as vessels to biju.

If it was cold and unreasonable to compare one life to another for the sake of rebirth, especially at the cost of another life… the Nara wouldn't let it bother him, and he made a significant gesture towards the visage of the blond.

"If you're capable, then…"

While the old woman clearly didn't appreciate being so callously asked to give up her life, she must have appreciated her cause, for she merely asked for a handful of chakra pills and a team of medical shinobi to heal the boy's wounds before revival.

There was a lot at stake, after all. The entire country's future hung precariously on a balance between the forces of the two biju assaulting it, and their one hope was a relatively untrained child that had already died to one of them and released the other.

* * *

The two biju engaged in a melee of terrifying level. Fully released, their power was high and their energy practically limitless. The fox had the general advantage of being significantly larger and having a multitude more tails just as large as himself, while the tanuki had the great advantage of terrain.

The ichibi smoothly sunk into the sand at a speed unbefitting for its size, ducking beneath tails and inhumanely powerful swathes of chakra as it did so. The kyuubi growled as it was assaulted and pushed aside by the weight of colossal tsunamis of sand as large as itself, but sustained only superficial damage, and sunk a claw deep into the sand, carving gouges into the ichibi's chest. The ichibi rose, the two roared, and they swung their limbs at one-another like a couple of god-borne children having tantrums, causing one another inconsequential injuries and permanently scarring the landscape.

When the ichibi would attack with enough sand to swallow a city, the kyuubi would cleave through it with enough force to destroy one. Biju weren't designed to fight one another, nor with the ability to destroy one another, and despite the kyuubi's promise to stop the ichibi, there did not seem to be an end to the battle in sight.

It was indisputable that the kyuubi held more power, but no biju has reached the threshold of power necessary to destroy one. Simply put, they were energy with form and consciousness. Immortal, incredibly powerful; a natural disaster. He could stall the ichibi – for what, he didn't know – and he could push the biju around and practically do what he wanted with it, but he would have incredible trouble keeping it restrained and he wasn't capable of killing it.

" **Why do you fight me, Kurama?!** " the ichibi growled, swishing its tail and parrying an unorthodox slash of one of the kyuubi's own. " **We're free! It's time to take over the world, kill who we want, do what we need to! We don't need to be sealed** _ **ever again**_ **!** "

Kurama backed up a step and huffed, tails swinging in agitation. " **Our mission was to** _ **protect**_ **the world, you idiot!** " The smaller biju attempted to stutter something out in response, but the fox leapt forward and shunted it even further away from the shinobi it was tasked to protect. " **We don't need to fight if you stop trying to kill them.** "

The biju snarled and growled at the fox, " **it was our mission until** _ **they**_ **attacked** _ **us**_ **! It's not my fault they're all idiots, they're** -"

" _ **You're insane!**_ "

" **No, Kurama, you're the insane one. What have they done to you, huh? Is it the Sharingan I've heard about? Have they mind** **-** **raped you, Kurama? This isn't** _ **you**_ **. You're** _ **the**_ **Kurama, the** _ **most powerful**_ **of the tailed beasts!** _ **But you know what? You're a disgrace of a biju!**_ **You're no more than a pet to those humans, used for your power. This isn't what father wanted!** "

The slight trace of plausibility in the surprisingly lucid biju's words gave the fox pause, but he was resolute in his position.

" **Just give them a chance, Shukaku,** " Kurama grunted. " **They might surprise you.** "

The great tanuki shook its head, " **I gave them a chance,** " it muttered.

Before either could pounce on the other, both had their attention drawn to an oddly familiar presence they sensed on their peripherals, back towards the encampment. By the time Kurama realized what had somehow occurred, it was too late to prevent the fast-fired bijudama of the ichibi.

But then, the kyuubi wasn't sure it was something he wanted to stop.

* * *

Now clothed, healed, and a little bit colder; Naruto's corpse was watched by a gathering of hopeful shinobi, waiting with bated breath for the boy to stir. They remained atop the dune for the sake of vision, the dozens of shinobi sparing glances to the biju on the far side of the village, evidently conversing but not quite loud enough for their voices to reach the distance.

In the middle, amidst the watchful eyes and earnest expressions, Chiyo sat with her hands – side by side – over the blond's stomach. Two medical shinobi sat behind her, each with a hand placed on one of her shoulders and carefully channeling their chakra into her coils. The woman's hands radiated a soft cerulean blend of chakra, and she slouched just a bit lower with each moment passed.

Realistically, the woman's alternative was death by age, helping or saving no one at all. At least this way, as her eyelids stooped and her shoulders dropped, at least she died for a reason. In a way, she would die just like her children did; for her village, and that gave her a small peace that she wouldn't otherwise have. She developed this jutsu originally in an attempt to bring back her children, if only in a faux manner for her grandson, but that became impossible. It was fitting, then, that she instead sacrifice herself for what her children sacrificed themselves for. If she resurrected the hokage in doing so, then – she snickered – she'd just have to live with that.

The blond twitched, and all eyes were drawn directly to him. No longer the center of attention, the woman fell back; forgotten, deceased, and her bloodline eradicated.

The hokage woke slowly, bleary, but the attention of the group was quickly drawn to a matter more pressing.

* * *

A boy shivered as his senses were assaulted and his mind spun. He ached everywhere, his thoughts were sloppy, and he had a great difficulty moving his eyelids, which was his first instinct.

He remembered… too much. Too much information. He remembered an old, kind man and his death. Then, he remembered a slightly younger, but still old and kind man, and his death too. In fact, many people had died, and while the memories were the opposite of pleasant, he was glad to remember them now.

He could recall who he was. Naruto Uzumaki. He was the fifth hokage, in office for less than a week – he knew that from his father, but he hadn't known the experience – and he was both the weakest hokage in history, and he'd had absolutely no idea what he was doing.

He remembered the distasteful treatment he beheld as a child, at the behest of both the civilian and shinobi population. He remembered his adoption, his condition being explained to him, and he remembered the kind man who introduced himself as his godfather who began tweaking his seal, who did so for many years to come. He remembered entering the academy; training with his seal, vaguely making friends with some of the students, graduating around the middle of the class, becoming a genin, getting nominated secretively as his adoptive grandfather's successor, going to wave, going to the chunin exams…

He remembered showing off his cool powers for the first time and beating up the ichibi, he remembered hearing about his adoptive grandfather's death and immediately becoming hokage, he remembered how poorly he handled his speech and he recognized how poorly he acted as hokage the days following. He remembered choosing to continue the war the Sand started, he remembered killing his fellow jinchuuriki for naught, and he remembered dying.

Most of all, he remembered what happened _after_ he died.

He was never a skilled fighter, and never a trained diplomat. But he was hokage, and his father sought to rectify that as best he could. With his memories now intact, he could see exactly where he went wrong, and while he couldn't exactly train his body, his chakra, or really much of anything as a soul, they managed. He would be a better hokage now, all he had to do was prove it.

His body quickly grew to a usable state, and the first thing he did was subtly press a finger to the inside of one of his pockets. Satisfied, and sensing great doom approaching, the blond stood – for a moment, he almost tripped – and followed the gazes of the rest of the surprisingly large cohort around him, who moved to give him space.

A bijudama – for it could be nothing else – zoomed towards the group far too fast to do little more than dive for the ground. Still, most of the shinobi ran for cover.

Naruto didn't feel like dying a second time.

" **GET OUT OF THE WAY!** "

He pushed someone failing to scatter aside and stole the pouch right off their hip. Quickly, he took two kunai, momentarily focused on the pair, and under the gazes of close to a hundred shinobi, leaned into a throw away from both the village and the evacuation, then twisted and threw the other kunai towards the intensive, heavily concentrated ball of godlike chakra that was now within the single digits of meters away.

In the moments before the deaths of those ducked to the ground, they would look back and re-imagine the explosion of yellow chakra that misplaced the single most destructive power known to mankind, just to reaffirm that they did the right thing by following the fifth hokage.

The very instant that their lives were meant to be quashed, the explosion that would have wiped them out inconsequentially destroyed some of the grainy, earthen landscape instead.

"Was it _that_ hard to get out of the way?" the blond grumbled. He shook his lightly burned throwing hand and left, away from the gathered shinobi and toward the biju, who seemed to be re-engaging into combat.

Shikaku sped forward, a million questions on mind but only able to ask one first. "What are you doing, Hokage-sama?!"

"Ah," he paused and turned around, willing to answer the man who he now realized was the only thing keeping his reign smooth at all. "I'm going to go seal the ichibi, you can all - no, scratch that." He coughed into his fist and raised his voice, " _wait here_ , all of you. But get that capitulation contract marked up if you can." He turned back towards the infinitely larger-than-he monsters and walked forward at a comfortable pace, waving a hand over his shoulder. "Ja ne!"

Whether it was the fact their hokage was so willing to accept his revival – not a question or even an odd look – or that he was so confidently striding toward the biju, whose fight would cause so much collateral damage that being near them was a death sentence of itself, none were willing to stop him, or decline his order.

He had, after all, just displayed an advanced variation of the _Hiraishin_ technique, the signature jutsu of the fourth hokage, which was once used to kill a thousand men in a matter of seconds.

* * *

 **AN** :

I don't really like the quality of this chapter, but I bet that's because I looked forward to writing it.

I'm back at university this month, but I'll try to get another chapter or two up before that.


	7. The Fifth's Atonement

Fix.

 **Chapter 6**

"In order to attain the impossible, one  
must attempt the absurd."

Note to those that are just checking the new update: Chapters 2, 3 and 4 have had notable scenes rewritten. This includes the coronation speech, Naruto's conversation with Gaara, and (less importantly) the fight against Shukaku/Gaara during the ambush.

* * *

…the hand wasn't healing.

The blond spat obscenities beneath his breath as he trudged through the increasingly flimsy sand. The bijudama had been close enough when he threw the second kunai that his hand took a dose of chakra poisoning, which effectively burned away the outer layer of skin and left the hand a bright steaming red. It was something that probably would've healed already if he still had the kyuubi, but he was left to rely on natural regeneration for the moment.

If it wasn't his throwing hand, it wouldn't even be an issue. As it is, another millisecond of exposure might've made his next challenge untenable.

To be fair, it was probably already impossible. Two biju fought, within one of the biju's natural territory. He had to put a stop to the fighting, and that meant he had to seal one. He _absolutely_ had to. They would destroy the sand village, and later the country, before he even had a chance to conquer it. That wouldn't do, and he was the only person around that had any chance of all at fixing the issue. Pressure, he supposed, that he would just have to live with.

The sand a mere few steps ahead exploded, stealing his vision and sending him careening back. Naruto barely held onto his footing. It was just a stray hit, what it was or who it came from he just didn't know. If he wasn't worried about the ichibi throwing another blast at him, he would've gone through the village and traveled across the rooftops. In retrospect, it would've been safer having sight and maybe he should've just done it anyway.

" **He's coming for you, Kurama!** " the ichibi yelled, its voice far but loud enough to easily carry the distance. " **Are you just going to** _ **let**_ **him seal you again?"**

The blond pushed forward at a greater pace.

" **I made a deal.** " The voice of the kyuubi held the same volume as its counterpart, but the tone was deeper and less incensed.

Even half the distance to the two as he was, Naruto could hear the growling of the tanuki.

" **The humans are the ones putting us against each other! Don't take me for an idiot, there's** _ **no**_ **way you can trust them!** "

He bit his lip as he increased his pace further, barely keeping from slipping and falling across the sand dunes. If he had his way, he would be able to leave the fox alone. He wanted to believe the fox was noble enough to adhere to their deal, but that might be because he'd spent his life with it and it might have coloured his perspective. Naruto had always been a bit too hopeful and – he knew now – naïve. Biju were considered demons. He didn't know how much it would take to sway the fox against him, but if he were there right at this moment, he knew he could persuade it away.

He didn't have the skill to capture a biju if both of them wanted to kill him. Hell, he might very well fail against even one. As much as he learned in death with his father, there was only so much he could be taught, and the man only had so much time to help. Like many others that the Shinigami had laid claim to, he was cursed to an eternity of working for the god, and he'd apparently wasted as much time as he'd probably ever be allowed to.

That wasn't to say he was helpless, but advice and fuinjutsu would only carry him so far.

The next voice was easily identifiable as the kyuubi. " **You are his target, not me.** "

" **Look to the** _ **future**_ **, you idiot! Who's next? What's going to happen when I'm not the problem, huh?** "

If the fox responded, Naruto didn't hear it.

" **Are you just going to bow your head with your tails between your legs and let them seal you the next time they come for you? Again, and again, and** _ **again**_ **? They'll** _ **never**_ **leave you alone, it's not in their nature.** **Humans revel in corruption, and our power breeds it!** _ **Kurama**_ **, this might be our last chance! Don't squander that!** "

Naruto crested the peak of the final dune between him and the biju, revealing their visages once more. The fox stood in front of him and to the side, between the ichibi and the village.

Kurama shook his great head with a grim expression. " **Have you never had a vessel you respected?** **I feel the same things you do, Shukaku, but we are not able to do what we want to. Get used to it and grow up.** "

When it growled at the retort, the ichibi happened to notice his arrival.

Reflexively, Naruto appeared a meter to the left, barely avoiding being bisected by a large sand spike from below. The seal in his pocket burned against his thigh, and he quickly reapplied it. Without time and supplies, he was left with applying seals the same way a summoner did; by creating the one-use seals using temporary ink created purely from chakra. He was very lucky it was simple enough to do on his first try. Discretely, he dropped a kunai and leapt forward, down the expanse of sand and to the scarred arena below.

The area around the biju was made of rough, burned and compact sand; an effect of their weight and the corrosion of their chakra. Out of the immediate reach of either biju, he pumped chakra into his vocal cords and cupped his mouth.

"You can leave, kyuubi!"

While Naruto would like the help, it was in poor taste to ask for it. As long as the kyuubi wasn't involved and Naruto didn't have to worry about its interference, sealing the ichibi would be difficult, but fairly methodical. Teleport when he's in trouble and seal it inside the over-prepared seal when he inevitably makes contact. Simple in theory.

" **And when you fail?"**

Naruto grit his teeth but didn't rise to the provocation. "I don't want to fight you, kyuubi! If you don't hurt anyone from the leaf, or the sand, you'll be safe here! I promise!"

" **I will not stick around, whether or not you die.** "

That was fine with him.

" _ **Kurama!**_ " the ichibi yelled indignantly, but the kyuubi had already leapt away at a speed befitting the size of its limbs. Even in the sand, the ichibi would not be able to keep up with it. The tanuki wore an expression of bitter betrayal, and Naruto himself wasn't sure whether or not to be worried that the kyuubi headed towards the Land of Fire.

He wasn't sure whether or not his army and the sand were still evacuating the village, but they must have seen the kyuubi leave. Hopefully they didn't take it as a sign to come help him out, because he was only able to protect himself.

" **The third time's the charm,** " the ichibi muttered, shaking its head.

A moment passed in silence.

Then, the arena exploded into a storm, goaded by howling gales of humid wind.

In his surprise, Naruto accidentally took a mouthful and flashed back onto the peak, coughing and spluttering sand. He dropped another kunai and tightened his grip on the next he took out. The massive figure of the ichibi towered over the storms, but they were at least a dozen times taller than himself. It was a tactic that would've done absolutely nothing to the kyuubi but was absolutely unfair against him.

" **You're arrogant if you believe a human child could ever best a biju.** "

Well, he supposed he wasn't very arrogant then. Still, there was always a way, however low the odds.

Before he had even a moment to contemplate the situation, he was diving under a volley of sand javelin. Barely avoiding a sand bullet that did hell to his back, he found himself in the shadow of the raccoon. It was way faster than he assumed it would be. He considered reaching forward and attempting to seal the ichibi, but he quickly realized he would be crushed beneath the weight of its arm within the second.

He flashed back to his initial perch.

"How am I- _fuck_!"

Naruto reeled back, a sharp column of sand jutting from his thigh, and flashed around the seal in his pocket, dislodging it. While he still had his wits about him, he quickly reapplied the seal.

" _Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!_ "

The ichibi grinned devilishly, and he realized the biju must have known where the kunai was and prepared to attack him in advance. He grit his teeth and tried his best to ignore the rush of blood. The fight had only just started, but he was already wounded. Thankfully, the biju seemed set on enjoying its first hit and the time it spent bellowing laughter was time he had to think.

He had dropped one of his kunai beside the ichibi before he flashed out of the way. He glanced down to the arena. The storm had apparently died down, perhaps because the ichibi decided it didn't need it any longer, and it seemed as good a place as any to throw another one, so he did so. The area around the scarred and burnt sand seemed harsh enough that the ichibi might have trouble pulling a second ambush.

Still, the ichibi held a simple counter to his ability to flee and he shouldn't use it again unless he's willing to risk another wound.

" **This will be the second time I kill you. That makes it your own fault,** " the ichibi sneered, " **it's a shame I couldn't kill Kurama with you.** "

Naruto took a short moment to remove his haori and wrap it tightly around the wound in his thigh, conscious and wary of the sand beneath and around him. He would have to keep on the move, as much as he could.

He knew it was only the biju's supreme confidence that kept him alive in this moment.

"We don't have to fight, Ichibi."

The demon cocked its head. " **Oh, but I want to.** " As to prove its point, it cracked open its maw. Naruto tensed as it took only seconds to create a third bijudama, noting in the corner of his eyes as sand swept over the kunai he threw into the scarred arena. He backed off, but he couldn't possibly move faster than the bijudama, and he doubted shunshin's viability with the ichibi's total control over the flooring. He'd only just learned the hiraishin and it was quickly becoming his only clutch. It hardly mattered that his escape route was cut off.

Whatever odds he had of dodging the blast were stripped to none when he lingered too long in one place and the sand beneath him curled around his feet. If only he was still able to use the kyuubi's chakra, it wouldn't be a problem to break out of.

If the beast was capable of speaking while using the ability, Naruto did not doubt he would be hearing taunting as the ichibi fired forward.

It was several times bigger than the last, probably because the ichibi wasn't under duress. Naruto took the inopportune moment to wonder how differently the fight would have gone if the kyuubi had chosen to help. It would probably be going the same, really.

The ichibi had made its mistake. In a gesture similar to one he did immediately upon his revival, Naruto threw a kunai forward and into the projectile. It was much closer and much harsher this time, and even as he threw it his already poisoned hand ached from the chakra exuded by the blast. He focused, his perception of time seemed to slow, and he chose his timing very carefully. If he used the jutsu a moment too early, the kunai would miss and he would die. If he used the jutsu a moment too late, the kunai would be annihilated by the attack and he would still die.

He counted himself lucky, then, when the bijudama exploded and he himself was none the worse for wear. The kunai he left beside the ichibi was annihilated with the blast, so despite the lingering clouds of corrosive chakra and with the slackening of his bindings, Naruto sped forward as fast as he could.

He collapsed beside the shivering form of the ichibi. He was out of breath, his leg hurt so much he didn't even know how he was still awake, and he was out of kunai. The ichibi was down, disoriented, its own body confused and convulsing under the effect of its own power. Naruto stole his chance, dredged up the remains of his chakra and placed both his hands against its hide.

" _SEAL!_ "

* * *

The bed entirely unfamiliar, the next time he woke he first tried to raise his head.

"Uzumaki-san, please lay back."

Even semi-conscious as he was, his heart fluttered.

"Y-you don't mean _hokage-sama_ , do you?"

He heard a short gasp, and his heart sunk. "Y-yes of course, Hokage-sama!"

Groaning, he landed his head and went back to sleep.

* * *

Their expensive robes rustling, the last of the sand's council left the room. Finally alone, Shikaku released a long, drawn out breath and leaned back against the desk beside him.

"It's so bothersome to have the upper-hand," he muttered. What he meant by that, of course, is that he had far too much to be doing.

The Sand village lost most of their military in their attack against Konoha, and what little remained was mostly crushed during their short all-or-nothing ambush the week before.

The original plan was to kill and exile what was left. A little barbaric, sure, and the civilians would obviously be angry with them, but the discontent would dwindle over time and it would give the Leaf unanimous control.

The situation was changed with the release and subsequent capture of the ichibi, and the hokage himself was now a beacon of hope to, of all things, the people he sought to subjugate. Unlike in Konoha with the fox, Suna had never been attacked by their biju. The ichibi had taken full control of its containers before, yes, but never been released. Its first sealing was a closed affair by a sand temple, without risk to the people. It was the first time they'd been exposed to the full and released power of the demon roaming their land. The chakra it emitted could personally be felt roaming the bodies of each and every individual around the vicinity of the village, and it naturally cultivated a great and immediate fear of the beast, dwarfing their old feelings regarding the biju immensely. It was interesting to note that the kyuubi did no such thing this time around, probably reigning in its chakra for whatever reason.

The last time Suna's jinchuuriki was affected by a complete possession, it took their fourth kazekage to save them. For a battle much more difficult without any chance of his help...

The Nara snickered.

The Godaime Hokage not only _came back to life_ to save the Sand against the greatest power they'd ever felt, but he went fearlessly against two biju on his lonesome to do it. Their council was being subservient, their shinobi seemed unnaturally apologetic, and the civilians remained out of the way. There was no need to do anything with those that remained in the village, few as the shinobi were. It only helped that the moment the first biju was released, the Leaf dropped the pretences of war and offered a hand. If the situation were less dire, the sand may not have accepted it, but the crippled village had no choice but to co-operate if they were to survive.

Being the one with complete authority at the time, the Nara offered it just to raise his own army's odds of survival. He could have instead guaranteed their dominion over the sand, by either leaving them to rot – attempting to leave, that is - or at least executing the important captives that surrendered. It was fortuitous that he chose not to do so, for the revival of the fifth would have been impossible and the sand was now in their debt. If Naruto wasn't revived, who knows what might have happened?

A hard knock at the doors to the office distracted him from his thoughts, and he walked around the desk to sit comfortably in the kazekage's chair.

He leaned back and crossed his arms. "Come in."

The doors burst open to admit several men clad in thick red armor, sheaths fit for katana dangling from their waists. They moved to stand at the sides of the room and faced the centre. Between them stepped in a thin man clad in red silken robes decorated with gold trim. The man walked forward with poise and nodded in his direction.

"Shikaku."

Surprised but coherent, the Nara quickly stood and bowed. "Daimyo-sama."

The man tilted his head, giving Shikaku a well-pronounced look of interest. "Where is the hokage?"

"The godaime is still healing. In his absence, I'm the de-facto head of state. I have the authority to attend to negotiations, and if you want me to forward anything to the hokage when he wakes up, I can do that for you." He sat back down and leaned forward, resting his hands on the desk atop one another. "Please have a seat," he said, gesturing to a comfortable seat to the side of his desk. It had been brought in by one of the many councilmen that had invaded the office earlier that day and been left there.

One of the samurai grabbed the chair and centred it in front of the desk, the daimyo taking his place comfortably, before retaking his place in the side of the procession. Shikaku had always thought the use of samurai was endearing, but wasteful. Shinobi would do their job cheaper and more effectively, but he supposed the benefit of samurai lay in their loyalty. He was probably just bitter that they occasional took their jobs, really.

"You'll be pleased to know I've abdicated the Wind Daimyo."

He knew that already but nodded. "Have you already replaced the financial infrastructure?"

"Yes," the daimyo said, his voice flavoured with a pleased tone. "The land's previous daimyo was unlikeable, and there has generally been little trouble with the exchange. I haven't touched the tax rate, it's well-placed."

Shikaku appreciated the explanation, but really, he didn't need to know any more than that. The Leaf was the fire's military institution, had always received more than enough funding from their country, and had thankfully little to do with governing, providing for, and taxing other villages or cities. "Then you are here…?"

"…to discuss our change in affairs. I now have effectively twice the population and twice the capital within my domain. The Land of Wind has ceased to exist, but Sunagakure has not. I assume you, as our primary military, want the jurisdiction that you hold over Konoha to extend to this village as well?"

Shikaku nodded. "That would be necessary to provide assistance to both countries."

"It's one country now," the daimyo said off-hand, "and that's agreeable. This village is already a well-placed military institution. I will say, I never expected you to attack Suna, especially without consulting me first. I don't consider the letter asking me to be ready consultation."

The Nara froze. "Declaration of War is at the prerogative of the hokage."

"That it is," the man muttered, shaking his head with a slight smile. "I don't mind, I'm just surprised you did it. Hiruzen never would have… well, there's the difference I suppose."

Shikaku gestured to the windows behind him, showcasing Suna's infrastructure bustling with civilians below. "With another village, the funding…"

"Yes, let's talk about the funding."

* * *

Naruto groaned and wrapped an arm about his face to shield his eyes. "Fuck me, that's bright…"

The light dimmed, and he felt someone pull him up and adjust his seat into a significantly more comfortable upright position. Blinking blearily, the blond turned to the Anbu beside the bed and nodded his thanks.

He was then presented with a glass of water, which he eagerly stuffed down his dry throat.

He rubbed a hand over his stomach, which pulsed with an irritating chakra he hoped would eventually settle, and noticed he was in a hospital gown. Ignoring thoughts of who dressed him, he gave the room a look; his was the only bed, and the only window was shut tight with a member of his Anbu by either side. It was dark outside. The final member of his guard stood beside the thick wooden door, dead-bolted, that would otherwise provide entrance to the room. He could only imagine how boring standing guard around an unconscious person had to have been.

He tried to move, and yelped. The leg that the ichibi had given a hole belayed the notion that he would be leaving the bed just yet, and he muttered a few choice words under his breath.

The Anbu beside him shuffled, and he turned his head to see Squirrel presenting him a tray holding paper, scrolls, and ink.

"That _is_ important, I guess." The blond frowned, "I can eat later."

* * *

The sun began its rise after an hour, and after another few hours of creating lasting copies of his ever-important seal, someone knocked on the door.

Naruto gave the cat that had reported his being awake a significant look, but the woman by the window shrugged.

Ignoring his now aching hand - which were both still injured - he handed Squirrel the tray, waved his hand to the Anbu by the door and cleared his throat, making himself comfortable. "Come in."

The door opened to admit a blonde teenager that seemed vaguely familiar.

"Hokage-sama," the girl bowed, fiddling with her hands. Behind her, Rabbit shut and locked the door. "I am Temari. I'm the fourth kazekage's daughter, and Gaara's brother."

Naruto paused at the mention of Gaara, but moved past it and released a hum. "Ahh! You were in the exams, right? You're also one of the ones that came out when we… well, nevermind. What is it?" He thought she was pretty the first time he saw her. After that, she was an enemy, and he supposed she must be an ally now.

The girl kept her head bowed. "I just wanted to apologize, and to thank you on behalf of Suna, for saving us from the ichibi."

Honestly, Naruto thought it a bit lacklustre if that was true.

"Just you?"

She froze. "My family is dead. I-I'm the only one left of the late kazekage's line."

He frowned, that sounded familiar, except he hadn't been so formal to who he considered at fault.

"I killed your brother."

"You released the ichibi, and you died for that," she said lowly, clenching her hands into fists and raising her head.

"I released the kyuubi too."

"I know you did that to help us, they told us about your seal." The girl smiled slightly, though it didn't reach her eyes, and her gaze stretched to the side. "You even came back from the dead to save us. Don't say you didn't, because you could have left us to die."

Naruto twitched. "You know I came here to conquer you, right?"

"We tried it first, that was a natural response."

She said it as a matter-of-fact. He supposed when he considered both perspectives, his earlier actions seemed justifiable and his later actions almost honourable. In his specific perspective, though, he was undeniably at fault.

He became amused when he realized she was probably the first one to truly argue with him since he became hokage. "Huh."

The girl twisted on her heels and made for the door. "If we're done…"

"Nah, not yet," Naruto said quickly, crossing his arms. Temari paused, but inevitably turned back to face him.

"Yes?"

"What are you apologizing for?"

She frowned. "W-well-"

Naruto released a pent-up breath, sorry for what he was going to say, but only in principle. "In my eyes, the Sand is responsible for the deaths of Hiruzen Sarutobi, the third hokage, and Jiraiya, the toad sage, legendary ninja and seal master. Are you apologizing for _that_ , are you apologizing for killing a thousand of our people, or are you apologizing for failing to kill more, huh?"

"I-I-" she stuttered, turning her head quickly between the bed-ridden hokage and the guards gazing in her direction around the room. "Look, we regret it, okay? We wish we never attacked you, but it was _your_ missing ninja that sparked all of this!"

As if realizing a mistake, the girl shut her mouth and covered her face in embarrassment.

Naruto frowned, but was aware of what she was insinuating. "It couldn't have been that hard to notice your kage wasn't your kage. Don't you train any sensor ninja? Didn't you _ever_ talk to your father?" As he continued to speak, Naruto's words became growled and she bowed her head. "Did you and your thousands of shinobi collectively forget about our peace treaty? I understand that Orochimaru played dress up as your leader, but what happened next is _your_ fault, not ours."

He sighed when she remained with her head down. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry about your siblings. Especially Gaara, since killing him was a huge mistake, but yeah. You can leave, shoo." Rabbit conveniently unlatched and opened the door for the girl, but she stopped before it.

"Please don't blame Suna," she said earnestly, "just two weeks ago, we… we've lost so many. Be kind to us, especially the civilians, please."

She lingered, but eventually left the room and Rabbit locked it back up, leaving Naruto to his thoughts and scribbles.

"Temari, huh?"

He'd probably be straight back to Konoha once he was healed up, but he'd remember the name and the sentiment. By this point, so much had happened that whatever hatred he had for the sand had dwindled down to next to nothing. He did just complain about them, but that was all he really had left to say about the matter. It was dealt with, and the sand was his now. Jiraiya would remain a sore spot, but that was something he'd sort out with the beast now lying in his gut.

Accepting the tray from Squirrel, he picked out another paper square and put the brush to the ink.

* * *

 **AN** :

Things are finally slowing back down in the second half of this chapter, which is a pleasant change of pace. I hope the battle with the ichibi isn't too lacklustre, but any drawn-out confrontation would've killed Naruto no matter how you go about it. He's still twelve.

Drop a follow if you liked it, so you can get the alert whenever I update!

To [MerchantOfBlueDeath] - I really appreciated that review, and it's probably what pumped out this chapter so soon, so you better not dislike it.

While Naruto isn't asexual and he's inevitably going to find a partner, I'm not set on one. Forcing a pairing won't make for a successful pairing, and he hardly works with genin anymore, so he might end up naturally getting together with someone less common, but that's unlikely. I'll probably put in some more interactions with a few girls here and there, and if I happen to write something that convinces me he'd work with someone, I'll probably stick to that.

I'll admit to eliminating Naruto/Hinata as an option, because there is absolutely no reasonable explanation _at all_ for them getting together in this story. They'd hardly have the chance to even walk by one another on the street. The only thing I could think of is Hiashi trying something, but that's not really in character with their limited interactions. At least Sakura was on his team, and Ino is both friends with Sakura and at least acquainted with Naruto.

There's still at least one more to introduce though, depending on how I stick to my vague plan.

If you don't like my portrayal of Temari this chapter, tough - but that's how I think she'd force herself to act in the situation where Suna is pretty much destroyed. Do note that this is obviously AU, and that I gave the sand more casualties during the invasion.

 _Sorry for the long AN!_


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